


Paper Girl

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, Femslash, First Love, Girls Kissing, Growing Up Together, Heartbreak, Mystery, Romance, Slice of Life, Urban Fantasy, twist ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 21:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: A paper girl, a wealthy neighborhood, and a strange house. Seiko Toyomi starts her job at the crack of dawn and then does her sleeping on the morning bus, in between she interacts with a strange young girl that never seems to leave her house.Seiko unexpectedly starts to befriend the girl and begins to wonder more and more: who is she? Why does no one know her? And is she trapped?A love story of newspapers, front porches, and growing up together





	Paper Girl

There was a house up on Townsend Street. A house with wedding-cake frosting trims and big white oak doors, a massive yard with room for three dogs but no dog in sight. It had a blue-grey exterior and thick green hedges perfectly trimmed in a square around the whole property. White daffodils bloomed in the numerous flower boxes and kaleidoscope bird feeders hung from the porch. The type of bird feeders even thieving squirrels looked at and said: no way guys, we can’t touch those ones.

A proper wrought iron fence hugged the hedges, dark, with ornate swoops and swirls at each bend, opening only once at an enormous double-gate. It was also dark iron and more decorative than practical, filled with large gaps and flowery designs, like out of some sort of story book. Seiko called it the ‘fairy gate’ in her head, holding her breath and crossing her fingers as she walked under the arch each time.

Everything was big there, big and quiet and filled with a hushed kind of luxury, it didn’t announce itself, but it was a living heartbeat that strangled everything else with it.

It was that type of street. A street with no cracks in the smooth grey sidewalks and cars with wax finishes and busybody mothers that yelled at her when she accidently walked on a lawn. Seiko didn’t mean to walk on the grass, she promised Mrs. Hankla it was only once and only since she was in a bit of a hurry.

They called the enclave ‘Greenbriar Hill’ and the other delivery kids were jealous she was assigned there, nobody else got tips like her. But nobody else had to deal with the wedding-cake house either.

They didn’t have to deal with the young girl in the neat frilly pajamas and face that scrunched up like an upset paper bag, watching Seiko with an exacting spotlight gaze.

The girl waited outside the big white oak doors every morning like one of those dogs that fetched the paper for you, but not the doting golden retriever type. More like a trimmed poodle, with it’s curls primped and perfumed with utmost care before it was walked. Or squatted next to a fire hydrant.

She looked around Seiko’s age, no more than 11, standing outside each morning in pink fluffy pajamas that fell past her knees and a pressed white bow. Her thick blonde hair was carefully curled and hung just above her shoulder tops, loose corkscrew curls that bounced when she moved. She had dark eyes the color of royal blue ink or sunless ocean waters, dark and ready to storm.

She had pinched cheeks and a little mouth, making her eyes seem even bigger on her small face and delicate features. Most strikingly was how pale she was, pale as unmarked parchment or bleached bone, like the dry skeleton of a hare Seiko saw once on a trip to Arizona: bare and stripped, a little chilling.

She was as pale as burnt ash and almost as worrying, like a sickly victorian child you thought to give cough syrup to. Or holy water.

Seiko wasn’t expecting to see anyone her age outside this early, the sun was barely up and Seiko’s arms were goose-fleshing from the chilly breeze. She had worn her short-sleeve Lego Batman t-shirt for her first day, making sure everyone saw it at least once since she spent her allowance and then some on the thing.

And now she was sitting on her bike in someone’s huge driveway with a little girl in pink staring fiercely back at her lego-shirt and shivering arms.

The girl glanced down at a leather wristwatch as if Seiko was late, what kind of kid had a leather wristwatch? Seiko plucked a newspaper out from her sack and hopped gingerly forward.

“Good morning miss,” that sounded like the right thing to say. She smiled, “It’s gonna be a beautiful day.”  
  
The girl reached out and snatched the newspaper from Seiko’s hands, “it’s going to rain.” She said flatly back and her blonde curls danced in place. “You’re new. What’s your name?”  
  
Seiko blinked a couple times, taken back. “Seiko. Seiko Toyomi, nice to meet you?” She wasn’t sure if she should put her hand out to shake, like a sales transaction or charged mob-boss greeting like she saw in movies.

“Well, Seiko,” the girl said tartly, “don’t leave the gate open next time, it’s a hazard.”  
  
Seiko’s eyes went huge and she frowned, “It’s my first day.”  
  
The girl arched her eyebrows pointedly over at the end of the lawn and Seiko followed her gaze, she had, indeed, left the gate open behind her. Seiko had a few snappy words trapped behind her tongue about the girl’s attitude.

“Annalise!” A voice called from inside the house, “Annalise! Did you get it?”  
  
“Yes mom,” the girl turned around, only sparing one last look behind her. “Don’t forget the gate. And,” she paused, “thank you for the paper.” She said stiffly. “Here.”  
  
She handed Seiko her tip and it all felt like some sort of dream Seiko was walking through, with  rich girls in sleeping wear sliding her balled up five dollar bills from her tight fists. She half-expected to see a large white swan walk out from behind the bushes to grant her wishes.

“Thanks,” Seiko piped up, blinking. “Have a nice day.”  
  
The girl, Annalise, just waved and shut the door behind her. “Don’t forget about the rain.”  
  
Seiko turned around to hide her eye-roll and jumped back on her bike, maybe money could buy giant yards and fancy bikes with more than one speed. But apparently it couldn’t buy manners.  
  
It did rain that day though, and every day after.

Seiko remembered it vividly, like an omen.

—————–

Seiko got up at 5:45am, just like her mom instructed, bolting upright with the first beep of her alarm clock and jumping into her sneakers. She had slept in her jeans and fuzzy orange sweater, her mom didn’t know about that part.

But it was Seiko’s second day of work and she wasn’t going to mess it up, she already got briefly yelled at for knocking over someone’s lawn gnome and delivering someone’s paper bent in half. Most people smiled and waved and handed her a dollar or two, but those two other encounters stuck in her mind like a sharpened pencil. It wouldn’t happen again.

The apartment was dark and soundless at that hour, almost seeming taboo, Seiko was careful to walk heel-toe down the hall and only turn on one light. She ended up stuffing a single piece of bread in her mouth and then hurrying out the door, groggy and wired as a dorm room outlet. She left ten minutes earlier than she needed to, whirring over Mr. Simmons shop and grinning from ear to ear the whole way on her bike.

Rogers, Illinois was a small town, small enough that people liked their papers hand-delivered and Mr. Simmons was old-fashioned and idyllic enough to hire kids to do it. It built character he said, tightened the community, somehow was unquestioned under ‘child labor laws.’ That sort of thing.

Seiko skidded to a halt in front of the corner shop, waving, “Hey Mr. Simmons!” She put her hand out, “Here for the Greenbriar route.”  
  
Mr. Simmons was out front moving boxes and fastening shut large sacks, bulging with rolled up papers. They were white with one thick strap for your shoulder and the words ‘Local Business Proud’ printed on the side.

Mr. Simmons handed her the far one, “Remember we’re having a pizza party this Friday,” he sounded properly awake and bright, “It’ll be the first one for the whole team.” Mr. Simmons was young, still graying around the temples and nearly blind in one eye, a traditionalist in the sense of people who forget what tradition is.

“Thanks Mr. Simmons, I’ll remember,” she grinned and waved, kicking off from the curb. “See you!” She streaked away, ready to prove herself in all her 10-year-old glory and with the energy of a newly-broken glow stick.

She pedaled hard, making little grunts as she pushed herself up the hill to Greenbriar, sweating despite the sweet fall chill in the air. The neighborhood was graveyard-still when she arrived, cold and blurry-eyed. She grinned, reaching two-story sprawling houses and carefully placing papers face-up in their slim plastic bags, like neatly wrapped Christmas morning presents.

She didn’t knock over any lawn gnomes this time.

Seiko was breathing hard, but in a good way, in the way that made her feel like she just answered a question right in class or did a perfect high-five. The wedding-cake house was in the middle house of her route, slightly removed from the other ones. Seiko closed the gate quickly behind her when she arrived and latched it tightly just in case.

It was earlier this time, no hint of sun on the horizon under the lumpy morning clouds and no sound of bird calls at all. The girl in pink pajamas was waiting for her.

Seiko waved, “I closed the gate!” She sang and jumped off her bike to hurry forward, “I’m even early.”  
  
Annalise looked her up and down and then nodded, just as pale and otherworldly as before. “Good.” Annalise put her hand out, “the other boy always used to forget anyway.”  
  
Seiko picked her way up the driveway, she smiled amiably. “Hey, do you go to Bristol Elementary school? Or Canyon Creek? I bet it’s Canyon.”  
  
The girl frowned at her, wiggling her fingers in midair for the paper, “Seiko Toyomi,” she sounded like she was prying the name off a burning skillet. “You go to Bristol.”  
  
Seiko nodded quickly, “Yeah, Bristol, how do you know that? Do you go there?” She hopped up and down, then stopped with a frown, “Probably not.” She would have seen her in the school halls if she did.

“Put rain boots on tomorrow,” Annalise fluffed her curling hair, “It will be worse.” She took the paper from her briskly. “Thank you for your service.” She handed her another large bill.

Seiko was still staring at her as she closed the door and another voice called as before, “Anna, dear, bring the tea over too.”

“Coming!”  
  
_What kind of girl was this?_

Seiko pulled her hood up as it began to drizzle, turning away and putting the oddness of it out of sight and out of mind. She slept on the bus on her way to school that morning and dreamt of poodles eating her bike tires and barking at her.

—————

The entire week continued like that: Seiko pedaling her heart out and trying to prove herself to some unknown entity that judged ten-year-olds on their job performance. Biking, delivering, and having snatches of conversation with early-waking exercise nuts, bathrobe-fathers with bags under their eyes, and old people ready to complain about the morning’s headlines.

And the girl. The strange girl.

She was chastising and brisk, reminding Seiko of the crabby middle-aged manager at the local CVS who always yelled at Seiko for picking up half the candy section and then only ever buying one. She reminded her of the blonde news-anchor lady who was always angry at the local politicians. She reminded her of someone who definitely had never seen the Lego Batman movie and never would.

Seiko only found out a little more about the sharp and secretive girl on the last day of the week: the friday pizza party. It stopped raining that day.

—-

“Does she have like, warts on her hands?”

“Or blood on the doorframe? For warding off the evil eye or something.”

“Tell me she has a raven that caws at you when you enter.”

“Why would I go inside?” Seiko pushed away the face of a bug-eyed boy with too many freckles and a whistle when he talked through the gap in his teeth. The other kid’s crowded around her in turn.

“Does she have roses in her garden?” A mousy girl with straight black hair and the voice of a tiny cricket asked her a little dreamily. “That never wilt or die. I bet they’re beautiful.”

“Tell me her mother tips you in crystals or astrology calendars or something.” June, a bright-eyed redhead, contributed excitably.  
  
“I’ve never seen the mom,” Seiko shook her head, “Only the daughter. And they don’t have roses.” Katy, the mousy girl, wilted at that. Katy was slightly chubby, stout, and skittish, always looking ready to apologize or sink into the floor like a self-effacing puddle.

Bobby Isler, the bug-eyed boy, frowned “Or blood?”  
  
“Or blood.”  
  
“Aww,” June slumped down, vivid red ponytail bobbying in place, she was a tall girl in baggy overalls and chipped fingernails each painted a different color. She grumbled, “That’s so lame.” She poked her pizza with one finger. “Are you even looking?”  
  
Seiko rolled her eyes and took a bite of her own luke-warm pepperoni pizza, Mr. Simmons had left them alone to ‘enjoy themselves’ as he explained with a wink. He thought they were talking about crushes or weed or whatever he assumed kids talk about.

They were not talking about weed.

“It’s not like that. It’s normal. Ish,” she looked away and scratched her nose, “Why are you all so interested in it? She’s seriously not a witch.”

Bobby poked her, “Nuh-uh. Don’t you watch channel 7?” He squinted at her, “How out of the loop are you?”  
  
They all stare at her, Seiko jutted her jaw out fiercely, “Me? You’re the ones,” she huffed, “you’re the ones who are losing it. She’s just a lady and her snooty daughter.”  
  
“I didn’t know she had a daughter,” Katy said slowly. “She never mentions it. That’s nice to know though.”  
  
Seiko blew stray dark hairs out of her eyes, she had cut it short for the new school year and immediately regretted it. It kept getting in her face.

“Yeah, well, she does. And she’s bratty,” she sniffed loudly, “and we don’t get channel 7, my mom says it’s rubbish.”  
  
“Rubbish,” June repeated, rolling the word around in her mouth and rubbing her nose, “are you doing that phony British accent again?”  
  
Seiko’s cheeks flushed red, June was in her fifth grade class and she had a long memory. Seiko looked away and took a huge bite of her pizza, “That was only for a little! SO long ago June.”  
  
June snickered and looked at the others, “she pretended to have British accent for all of 4th grade, and not even a good one.”  
  
“It was only for a month!” Seiko retorted sharply, “barely three weeks.”  
  
June laughed again, “it was the worst.”  
  
Bobby laughed loudly and Katy looked away politely, like this was some embarrassing family affair where the aunt took her shoes off and threw them at your rotten Uncle Shou for smoking and tipping the pretty waitress too much.

Katy cleared her throat, “She’s the only psychic in town, I watch her every night.” She met Seiko’s eyes, “I’m going to get my love line read by her.” She nodded astutely, like it was set in stone and the only obvious path ahead. Katy was also the oldest of them, just turned 13, and that made an impression in Seiko’s head.

Or at least, it had. She wrinkled her nose, “Love line?” She snorted, “That’s all bogus, she’s just a rich lady who reads off a teleprompter.” She shook her head, “That’s what my mom says.” Her mom had a lot of opinions.

“No way,” June crossed her arms over her chest, “She’s the real deal. She did Macy’s moms fortune on LIVE TELEVISION, she talked about future death in the family and Macy’s grandpa died the next week! She’s the real deal.”  
  
Madame Catherine Lynne (or just Madame Lynne) was a local television personality who told people’s fortune on channel seven, several small-town legends had sprung up around her since. With her huge glasses, elbow-length gloves, long evening gowns and deep resounding voice, they called her everything from a genuine black-magic witch to an elaborate hack.

“I just deliver her papers,” Seiko grumbled into her soda, “I didn’t even know that was her house.” Which was true, it was just another fancy house in a row of fancy houses.

“Well, that’s our favorite space case for you,” June reached for Seiko to give her one of her signature noogie’s.

Seiko pushed her way, “And our favorite terrible busy-body.”  
  
They exchanged a number of kicks under the table until Katy put her hands down, “Let me know if you see the Madame.” She said in a small but firm voice, “Ask her if she’s gotten letters from a Katy Mendoza. I’ve been,” she struggled, face blooming red as she realized they were all staring at her now. “I’ve been writing…” She ended weakly.

Seiko frowned, there was so much earnestness in the other girl’s face, almost desperate. Seiko puffed her chest out, “I will, I promise.”

They all sat back in their chairs and Seiko stifled a yawn as the music of the pizza parlour swelled. She was ready to leave by then, still tired from waking up at around 5am all week- her father joked about how this is what it felt like being a real worker. She’s not sure she wanted it.

Seiko sucked on her soda until only the grating sound of ice and backwash was left. She spoke up again after a long moment, “Do any of you know if an Annalise Lynne goes to Canyon Creek? That’s the daughter.”  
  
They all just exchanged blank looks with each other, Bobby was the first to shrug, “Like I said, I didn’t even know she had a daughter.”  
  
Seiko frowned at that, but June sighed exaggeratedly, “I bet she goes to some fancy private school.” She waved her hand in the air, eyes drifting down, “Did you get a new sticker on your bag Seiko?” She changed the subject, “Do you even know who Daft Punk is?”

Seiko turned on her, “Of course I do, and for your information…” The night continued on, bickering and talking and listening to cheesy pizza parlour tunes.

Seiko never found out where Annalise went to school, or if she went to school at all.

——————–

_She looks so lonely._

Another blurry, creeping day hit Seiko with long grasping fingers, yanking her out of bed with a groan. She rubbed her eyes, trying to fight through the thin spiderwebs criss-crossing her headspace as she lumbered around the apartment at 5 in the morning.

The first week of Seiko’s new job slipped quickly by and by the second and third she was getting tired, more tired than she thought she could be.

Her dad, once again, told her that ‘this is what being a real working person felt like.’ The joke was getting old. She barely remembered leaving the house and getting to the corner shop, it was all getting old.

Seiko drove her boke dutifully up the hill to Greenbriar, the weather had been getting cooler with each week as Illinois winter bore down, but that day was the exception. It was going to erratically climb up into the high 60s and shine all day, but that was weather for you.

Seiko was barely cognate of her regular route, pedal, place, pedal, wave, accept two dollars, keep going. She didn’t think it would become so rote so fast, but it was just as mindless as her friend Kingsley warned.

He was always warning her about something though, she’d call it a downright nervous disorder if the spirit of one of her auntie’s wouldn’t materialize and pinch her cheek with a ‘be nice Seiko’ from beyond the grave.

She could be nice.

It was on that particularly warm fall day that Seiko was struck with a strange thought, a sticky hard thought that that caught in her mind like a thorn. She approached the wedding-cake house with the girl perched outside like an ever present stone guardian.

_She looks so lonely._

It echoed within her.

Seiko wouldn’t call herself particularly perceptive, but that didn’t stop her from looking the girl up and down. She made a stunning pale silhouette against the enormous house with the air of an-fashioned heroine waiting for her family to return from the war.

_It’s all so lonely._

Seiko shook her head vigorously,  _she’s a rich, pretty girl, she’ll be more than fine_ _._

Seiko took the paper out immediately and shuffled up to the house, “Hiya,” she spoke up, remembering herself. “Good morning.”

Annalise’s brow knit together, “good morning.”  
  
Seiko shifted from foot to foot, holding the paper aloft. There was another thing she was working up to, maybe this was the right moment. Seiko could be nice. And maybe Annalise would like the conversation.

“So,” she cleared her throat, shifting from side to side. “I have thing.”

Annalise arched an eyebrow up, “What thing?” She asked testily, “Did you rip the paper?”

“No!” Seiko lifted her chin up proudly, “It’s not about papers. I was just wondering,” she took a deep breath in, deciding to do this now. “Have you seen any letters from a Katy Mendoza?”  
  
“Who?” Annalise took a step back, wary and eyeing her.

“Katy Mendoza. She writes you letters, I mean, she writes your mom.” She felt the sting of awkwardness rubbing against her skin. Annalise was looking at her like she was growing another head- and that head was ugly. This was a bad idea.

Annalise’s sharp blue eyes penetrated her like a swear word in church: echoing and harsh. Annalise cleared her throat, “We get many letters.”

“She’s my friend,” Seiko went on, “She wants to have her love line read. She’s into that sort of thing, she’s thinks she’ll never find love or something and that Madame Lynne, your mom, can help I guess.”  
  
Annalise was still frowning, as if perplexed by a certain math problem or stubborn weed. She put her hand out for the paper, Seiko reluctantly handed it over, wilting in place. That hadn’t gone well.

“Thank you for the paper,” Annalise handed her five dollars. “Have a good day.”  
  
Seiko wanted to bury her face in the perfectly manicured grass, _what was I thinking? She doesn’t even want to talk to me in general, much less do favors._

Seiko turned to flee to her bike and pedal until her thighs burned away her own fumbling mouth and unnecessary probing.

“And Seiko,” Seiko stopped in place, Annalise hadn’t closed the door yet, voice chasing her. “I will look for your friend’s letter. I won’t forget.” She said, voice measured and whispery. She closed the door swiftly afterward, before Seiko could add anything else.

“Thanks,” Seiko stared blankly back at the large white oak doors and latched golden handles.

Sometimes she thought she saw Annalise watching her from the second story window, stony and frozen in place, hand gently touching the window and following her. Other times she thought it was just her brain conjuring up tales in her head, the type with snow queen’s daughters and fairy gates.

She rode her bicycle away,  _this whole place is lonely._

The empty lawns and gated homes and featureless driveways go on and on and Seiko wished for a moment she wasn’t a working girl, that she was still in bed waiting for the morning to come.

——————

Life went on.

She was graduating fifth grade that year and it couldn’t have felt like a bigger deal, would she follow her friends to Bristol Middle School or go to the local charter school, Elmswood?

Elmswood had a better reputation, bigger cafeteria, and a soccer team who actually made to the state championships. Then of course some Chicago school would immediately bump them out of state championships, but they still made it all the same.

Seiko wasn’t very good at sticking to sports, or hobbies for that matter, but she was pretty excited for soccer this year. The early-morning biking helped her stamina and game play, the fact she couldn’t actually kick the ball in any desired direction did not.

But Liza Mayweather was captain of the team and she was 5 feet 5 inches of the ‘coolest girl’ Seiko knew. Liza was going to Elmswood.

But then Seiko would have to leave Kingsley, her best friend since kindergarten. They met on the first day, traded chocolate puddings, chased a bouncy ball around for two hours straight together, and had been inseparable ever since. It was a hard choice and wasn’t getting any easier.

Seiko kept her paper route, even as the weather turned for the worse and she already had enough money saved up to buy at the very least a second hand Switch. However, things in the neighbor simply became more and more habitual, familiar.

The people in the brown house had a Saint Bernard named Nooky who was possibly the best creature ever, he gave a world ending ‘boof’ whenever he saw her and Seiko’s heart soared. Mrs. Hankla let her pet him some days.

Several of the houses had outdoor cats who appeared on high fences, fancy-feast enthusiasts who would eye you from afar and daintily get closer and closer each week. She named the white one ‘General Sour Cream’ and the calico one ‘Grand Duchess Granola.’ They were in love.

Less people jogged in the winter, more people greeted her with sleep-crusted eyes and a quick ‘are you alright sweetheart?’

Two different people offered her new gloves to wear. She already had gloves.

Seiko learned about the girl too.

Annalise changed from her pink pajamas to a loose long-sleeved top and soft matching black bottoms. She liked tea, because of course she did, she didn’t like the neighbors mowing their lawns, she liked Seiko’s rainbow fingerless gloves. Or at least, Seiko hoped she did since Annalise kept glancing at them.

Annalise could play the piano, she got headaches easily, and thought anyone who woke up past eight O’Clock had simply already given up on life. She knew name brands, hated fast-fashion, and ran her own ‘Plastic Reduction’ eco-education home page. She gave Seiko a sticker for it.

And that was it.

Seiko assumed there wasn’t anything more to it, and then it was February.

————

Snow fell in wallops of sticky cold droplets that hit unwitting citizens like frigid water balloons from above, half-ice and half-slushy it might as well have been the devil pissing on them. That’s what one of the older kids said on the bus yesterday when it first started.

Seiko repeated it to Kingsley who joined her in giggling into their hands like they said it themselves.

Seiko expected school to be closed the next day, she expected the roads to be shut down and people to be banned from the outdoors like some sort of dangerous zoo enclosure. She expected to drink hot chocolate in bed and watch youtube videos of ‘how it’s made’ all day.

Her alarm rang at 5:45 am anyway. The people needed their news, they needed that fresh headline: It’s Cold as a Witch’s teat in a Brass Bra. Seiko had learned that one on the bus too.

She hadn’t missed a day of work so far and she, for reasons beyond herself, wasn’t going to start now. Her uncle had bought her new boots for her birthday: fur-trimmed with little puff-balls at the end of the shoelaces, he told her to break them in nice and easy. This would have to be the ‘mean and hard’ way instead.

She put on two pairs of socks underneath and went to the doorway.

She stuffed on her oversized ewok hat, a joke-present she got before she turned 11 and too old for that sort of thing. But it was as thick as siberian’s arm hair and the little ears made her feel a little bolder in the furious white morning.

“Where are you going Seiko?” Her mom was also up at 5am, always claiming to be busy with Seiko’s little sister Rei at this hour, but Rei was 2 by then and barely up any more. Their dad swore their mom had insomnia, but her mom would be in her grave before she admitted to that sort of thing.

She looked at Seiko’s fluffy hat and pretended to be busy folding kitchen rags.

“Work mom,” she adjusted her hat and found a large fleece scarf to wrap around her neck.

Her mom sniffed, “Don’t ride your bike.”  
  
“I can’t,” Seiko blinked with a grumble, “Too bad out.”  
  
“And don’t talk to strangers.”  
  
“When do I ever talk to strangers mom?” Seiko retorted with a yawn and a prickle behind her words.

Her mom patted her shoulder, “I’m making leftovers for breakfast. Take a hot shower when you’re back, school isn’t canceled.”  
  
“I knoooow,” she moaned and went for the door. “And don’t move my backpack. I got stuff in there and I keep not being able to find it.”  
  
“Then don’t leave it where I can kick it.”  
  
“Ugh,” she made a face, “bye mom.”

Seiko left before they could get into one of their regular squabbles, the weather didn’t help since Seiko always felt like they were living on top of each other when they got snowed-in. Her family’s apartment was fine, everything worked and the pipes never froze, but it was… tight. It had three rooms, one bathroom, and a tucked away kitchen with no oven. But it was fine, it had a carpet that didn’t static and an outside not completely overcome by hobos or nettles.

It was on the second story of a red-brick apartment building that had a bent TV dish outside and rusty skateboards piling up on the side. The building’s heating worked most the time and the air conditioning worked some of the time.

Between the weeds growing up between cracks and the convenience store that sold cigarettes to anyone not carrying a pacifier, it was fine, everything was fine. Walking over to Greenbriar on the other hand though was crossing between ‘fine’ to the ‘fairygate.’

Seiko collected her wares at the corner shop, Mr. Simmons applauded her for coming in at all and handed her two hot packs for her hands. She didn’t say much back, she didn’t know why she was there either.

She skimmed the paper’s headline: It’s Cold. So Cold, Father Winter is Definitely Passing a Particularly Frigid Gallstone Over Us. Seiko traveled slowly into the fairy hills, covered in powdery white sugar and untouched by the bustling of other determined worker ants, blithely ignoring the coming slush and grime of the town’s roads and sidewalks.

Seiko trudged onward. She forgot her hands, her feet, and everything else in between as she walked, shivered, and delivered.

——

“Attagirl,” Mr. Busby of the brown house and fake teeth handed her a five. He had never done that before. “Good see the youth off their phones and actually doing something.”  
  
Seiko just nodded in response and mutely moved to the next house. The street wound on in a dusty blaring-white monotony, almost no one was up to greet her as she placed one plastic-wrapped paper down after the next.

She wasn’t at all surprised to find Annalise Lynne outside when she reached the wedding-cake house. Strangely though, the other girl wasn’t in her usual position next to the door, safe and dry with the usual impassive look on her face.

Seiko’s eyebrows rose, Annalise was bent over the edge of her concrete porch, squinting out at her snowy domain. She had pink boots stuffed over her feet and a yellow umbrella shielding her from the onslaught of slushy snow from up above.

She was bundled up underneath the umbrella and looking nervously at the ground, lips pinched together and expression shadowed, whole body as tense as a stretched rubber band.

Seiko tilted her head to the side, pausing for a long second. Annalise shifted in place, worry-lines permeating her young face.

“Uh,” Seiko hurried up the girl’s vast driveway, “How’s it going Annalise?” Her voice sounded rusted and stiff to her own ears as she asked.

Annalise blinked up, her expression noticeably strained. “Nothing,” she murmured quietly and then looked back to the snowbanks, clutching the umbrella. She glanced up unseeingly, “You must be cold.”  
  
Seiko furrowed her brow, “Yeah.” She scratched her chin, “It’s cold.”  
  
Seiko just nodded, sniffing slightly, “The last boy would never come in weather like this.” Her gaze was still trained away from her. “Thank you for your service.”  
  
Whenever she said that Seiko felt like a war veteran being thanked at an airport by a white woman who bought in bulk from costco. She just nodded again.

“Is… everything okay? Do you need,” Seiko searched the ground, “Help?” She offered weakly since it seemed like the thing to do.

Annalise finally looked up again, “I’m capable of handling it,” she clutched the umbrella and reached absently up to her ear. There was a small empty hole there. She frowned, “But…” She met her eyes briefly, “if you see a blue diamond earring then, well,” she bit her lip, “let me know.”  
  
Seiko journeyed the little way up to the side of the porch, the overhang finally protecting her from the soggy snowfall. “Blue earring?”  
  
Annalise nodded shallowly, barely tilting her head down, “it looks like a snowdrop.” Her hands bleached on the umbrella handle, “and my mom’s going to freaking kill me for losing it.”  
  
Seiko stood up straight at that statement, the words strangely out of place and striking.  _My mom’s going to freaking kill me._  What?

“Hey, watch my papers,” Seiko pushed her pack toward the dry doorway. “I once found my sister’s binky in a playground ball pit.”

Annalise looked up sharply, “Seiko Toyomi, I can’t,” she said quickly, “I can’t ask you to do that.”

Seiko made a face at her, “You can just call me Seiko,” she wrinkled her nose, “and it’s not a big deal, honest. Did you lose it around here?”  
  
Annalise looked away, cheeks burning a bland red, like her face wasn’t accustomed to any color at all. “Maybe…” She said slowly, “Last night I went out here to look at the snowfall and,” She said haltingly and felt at her ear, “When I woke up this morning I realized I didn’t have one of my earrings. Ugh.” She growled in the back of her throat, “Stupid,  _stupid._  She’ll be so mad.”  
  
Seiko cocked her eyebrows up, “When does your mom normally wake up?”  
  
Annalise frowned, “She had a late show last night,” her shoulders relaxed, “So she’ll be out for at least a little longer, maybe even 7:30.”  
  
Seiko smiled, “Alright!” She hopped into the nearest snow pile, sinking into the layering ice and sleet. “Let’s get looking.”  
  
Annalise watched her carefully, “… Thank you.” She spoke softly, clearly, searching Seiko’s face for a moment before nodding, “Check by the flower bed.” Annalise leaned off the stoop and pointed, “It would be somewhere close to the bottom.”  
  
Seiko got to work sifting through the piles of wet slush, her gloves soaking through and eyes straining against the pure white mass. “Are you sure it fell here?”  
  
“No,” Annalise pointed to her right, “check over there.”  
  
They hurried, Annalise pointing and Seiko kicking and churning her way around the yard.

“No, no, not there, that’s too far,” Annalise huffed after several minutes, breath coming out in puffy little clouds. She stood up in place, “This will take too long. One second, wait here.”  
  
Seiko looked up brightly, “What?” She cocked an eyebrow up at her, “Also, for the record, I’m doing this to be nice. Friendly. Polite, stop glaring at me.”  
  
“I’m not glaring,” Annalise snapped and looked to the door, “I’m just… frustrated.” She scuffed her boot on the ground and then looked back up, “I’m going to help. One second.”  
  
“Okay?” Seiko had figured Annalise was too delicate or soft or perfectly-moisturized to wade into the clingy snow with her and help dig. That’s what you hired paper girls for.

Annalise tossed her umbrella aside and swung open her house door, Seiko peaked into the dim foyer: huge and holding a grand staircase. Seiko just blinked at it as the other girl ran back inside.

Seiko told herself she was just being nice. It was the right thing to do. She wasn’t here to be a looky loo, especially since her mother would never let her live it down if she was. They weren’t the type of family to get fascinated by pop stars or celebrities or late night TV show psychics.

Or their strange daughters.

Seiko stood in the bitter wind, shivering slightly and glancing at her undelivered papers. They were all definitely late.

But maybe the neighbors would forgive her for a snow-storm delay.

Seiko watched the family’s big doors for another minute, waiting for something. Did Annalise abandon her to the cold and needle-in-a-haystack quest? Should she leave?

Just as she was thinking about getting her pack and being on her way, Annalise strode calmly back outside. Seiko stopped in place as she did, “Oh my God.”

Annalise lifted her chin with a sniff. “Don’t laugh.”

Annalise was wearing what looked like a plastic beekeepers helmet, yellow cleaning gloves secured by rubber bands, two winter coats covered by a teal rain jacket, and what looked like shiny waterproof ski pants. She even wore plastic bags over her winter boots- also secured by rubber bands.

Seiko ended up covering her mouth and snickering.

Annalise’s face glowed red, “I don’t like getting wet!”

Seiko laughed into her hands, “No, no, I get it.” She giggled, “It’s just… okay.”  
  
Annalise put her hands on her hips, “Are you here to help or make fun of me?”  
  
Seiko gave a cheeky grin, “Can I do both? Because… that’s a bee helmet.”  
  
Annalise tilted her chin up with a frown, “No, we’re not that familiar yet.”  
  
Seiko shrugged and bent down again, “How familiar does a newspaper girl and her house-deliverees have to be?”

“Well I’ll tell you when we’re there, then you can laugh I suppose.” Annalise shuffled forward, weighed down by her various clothes. “Though your assistance will be noted.”  
  
Seiko shrugged, “Don’t mention it.”  
  
Annalise teetered on the edge of her porch, looked closely at all the snow, like it was a freezing lake she was preparing herself to jump buck-naked into.   
  
Seiko gave her a funny look, “Are you waiting for something?”  
  
Annalise shot her an unreadable glance, unnervingly blank. Then she widened her stance, took a deep breath, exhaled, and did a short flailing hop into the snow.

She landed, hands out and eyes screwed shut, whole body star-fished out as if to keep everything away. She opened her eyes slowly.

“Oh,” she shivered and then turned around in a tight circle, kicking a nearby pile of snow, “Oh!”

Seiko knit her brow together, Annalise expression had opened up into a strange erratic joy- fascinated by the mounds of white fluff. “Oh this is very good.”

“Yes?”  
  
Seiko watched Annalise gawk and poke at the piles, picking up a handful of the stuff and throwing it in the air. “Look at that!” It fell in lumps down and she beamed, kicking another pile over.

Seiko waited for a while before clearing her throat. “Um,” she looked around, “Are you not allowed to play in the snow?” She had a weird feeling about the answer.

Annalise’s guarded eyes flicked in her direction, she straightened up. “I just… don’t do it often.” She bent down again like a robot given a sudden direction, “Alright, where have you already searched?”

Seiko pointed to several locations around the porch and they got to work again, pointing and guessing and carefully searching. The snowfall slowly dwindled, turning from fat wet balls into tiny dandelion fluffs. Faint rays of sun finally broke out into a sleek grey morning, weak and barely there like the wheezing breaths of a forgotten old man.

Seiko was starting to get a headache from the glare of the endless white, she finally sat back on her haunches and turned to the other girl. “What will happen if you don’t find it?”  
  
Annalise froze mid-sift, eyes cast down, “my mom,” she clenched her teeth, “will be really pissed.”  
  
“Oh,” Seiko could only guess at what that meant for her. Grounding? Pony privileges revoked? A dungeon? Who knew.

“They were for my birthday,” she continued bitterly, “she was so excited to give them to me. Said it was some milestone.” Annalise shook her head, “Goddammit.”  
  
Seiko giggled at that.

“What?” Annalise glanced at her. “What is it?”  
  
“Nothing,” Seiko kept running her fingers through the layers, “it’s just, you know, you don’t seem like the type to curse.” She snorted, “Too prim.”  
  
Annalise paused at that, giving Seiko a hard long look. Then, she drew herself up, standing tall, squaring her shoulders, and making herself big and solid. She held Seiko’s gaze as a lion would before jumping through a fiery hoop. “FUCK.”  
  
Seiko burst into a side-splitting laugh, rich and spilling out her from her insides like a warm river, she held her sides and rolled back in the snow, “Oh my god.”  
  
“Shit!”

“No wait,” she laughed, “stop.”  
  
“Bastard baby idiot!”

Seiko waved her hand through the air, “You’ve proved it, you’ve proved it.” Seiko wiped at her eyes and couldn’t miss the pleased smile crossing Annalise’s face, terribly satisfied with itself.

“Well. Now you know.” She flattened down her bloated jacket like it was a fine party dress.  
  
Seiko couldn’t stop laughing, she turned over in place. “You showed me. I’ve learned a lot today.”  
  
Annalise hummed and looked her over, “you’re a strange girl.”  
  
“Me?” Seiko’s face lit up and she kept snickering, “Me?”  
  
“Yes,” Annalise delicately picked through some more snow. “All… those outfits you wear and bike riding. You go so fast, where is your helmet?”  
  
“You sound like my mom,” Seiko grumbled, but she was still smiling. “You’re the one who lives in a huge house with a psychic mom. And no one’s even heard of you, do you go to some fancy boarding school or something? With like, uniforms and everything. I bet it’s in England.” And maybe with wizards and sorting hats and dragons, Seiko had theories.

Annalise didn’t look up, her expression downcast and eyes uneasy. “Well,” she folded into herself. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just homeschooled.”  
  
“Oh,” Seiko blinked a couple times, that wasn’t what she imagined. It wasn’t how she imagined homeschool kids looked or how she imagined Annalise spent her days.

Annalise met her eyes tentatively, “You go to the school down the way,” Annalise touched her elbow, “Do you like it?”  
  
Seiko wasn’t sure how to answer that, did she like it? She didn’t know. It’s just what she did, it’s what everyone did, it’s not something you liked or didn’t, you just did it- like your laundry or the dishes.

“I guess?” She itched her nose, “I like PE and science class. Sometimes I like art, but Miss Shaw is kind of an old bag, she keeps telling me I draw without purpose. Whatever that means.”  
  
“Right,” Annalise looked away, as if that wasn’t what she was looking for.

“Right,” Seiko turned away, unable to hold on to whatever this was. She was about to tell Annalise to maybe secretly buy another pair of earrings and get rush delivery. And then she saw something glittering in the snow.

“Woah,” she reached down, following the reflection- a silver glare catching the light. “Oh man.” She picked up a blue-diamond, shaped as a perfect snowdrop with a silver back and little delicate outline.

It looked like something a prince might give a princess for her hand in marriage or a charm to ward off warlocks and ugly curses. It caught the light like a bird song and Seiko has to gape at the thing for a second.

She never got into ‘stuff,’ how could she? She could afford fingerless rainbow gloves and novelty t-shirts and the occasional ewok hat, but they weren’t like this. Nothing was like this.

“Here,” Seiko pushed it away from herself as if it burned, swallowing some bile in her throat she couldn’t name. She wasn’t going to own something like that, even if she got a silly boyfriend or big wedding, she knew that.

Annalise took it, cradling it in her clumsy gloved hands. “Thank you,” she said breathlessly, “Thank you so much.”  
  
Seiko thought she saw Annalise’s eyes go damp and slightly red, but it was hard to tell.  
  
Seiko just patted her knee, “No big deal,” she shrugged, “Pissing off your parents sucks.”  _And it doesn’t look like you have anyone else_.

Seiko didn’t think of herself as observant or thoughtful or any of those ‘ding’ words, but Annalise looked up at her and Seiko felt like something, someone, after all.

  
Annalise put her hand out, “I can’t repay you enough.” For some reason, they shake, there in the snow and weak light and undelivered newspapers. “Let me get you some tea or dry gloves or anything.”  
  
Seiko just sniffed and looked away, “Nah.” She dusted herself off and got up again, “Just don’t complain about me and the gate or how I bike and all that stuff.” She winked, “I’m the good samaritan here.”  
  
“Yes, yes you are,” Annalise’s eyes go soft and she stood up after her. “Let me get you som-”  
  
And maybe she would have gotten her something, but they both heard footsteps from inside, “Annalise?” A voice called, “Honey?”

Annalise froze like she was a burglar caught in police headlights, “I gotta go.”  
  
They both tore away in opposite directions, though Seiko didn’t know what she was running for, she looked over to shoulder to see Annalise ripping off her plastic gloves and heavy coat, eyes wild with something.

Seiko hurried away with her pack at her side and a few missed calls from various adults. School had been canceled after all. And where was she? She should have been back then. And so on.

Seiko was wet and cold and achy when she returned, limbs heavy as stones and trembling on their own. Her thoughts endlessly started churning, taking apart what just happened. Annalise in the snow, her face as bright as an expanding star.

Annalise as frightened as a hare in a claw trap, Annalise cradling the blue diamond and on the verge of tears, Annalise looking at her.

 _She’s just another girl,_  she reminded herself,  _and I’m just being a good person._

She closed her eyes and put her head against the shower wall, hot water ran over her back and she exhaled, it was a day worth more than she knew.

—————

Annalise started to open up more to her each time she visited, as if finding her earring had turned Seiko from ‘alien service worker’ into ‘acceptable stranger on my porch.’

She started chatting, about the weather, about the Chicago Cubs (Annalise liked them for some reason), about the neighborhood and what size dog was ideal. Seiko said the bigger the dog the better, Annalise thought that if it couldn’t fit in a children’s swing it was too big.

Seiko started to worry more, that Annalise wasn’t allowed to play in the snow, that she wasn’t allowed to lose things. That she wasn’t outside anymore.

There wasn’t much she could do though and worrying didn’t stop time from passing like slowly dripping candle wax. Winter turned to spring and Seiko cut her hair again as her graduated into 6th grade, she was starting to like the short look.

“So you’re going to ‘Elmswood’,” Annalise said one day, bits of summer sun streaking across her cheek and eyes unreadable.

“Sure,” Seiko shrugged, “I mean, I think the soccer team will be cool and they have an actual film club instead of just one kid running a movie review column in the school paper.”  
  
“So?” Annalise still seemed bemused by everything about her.

“Plus, I mean, it’ll be nice,” Seiko put her hands in her pockets, “Maybe I can start over, ya know? Most the kids in my class won’t be going there,” she stood all the way up, “I’ll be the cool new kid.”  
  
Annalise somehow gave her an even more bemused look, “Are you not cool?” She asked dryly.

Seiko stuck her tongue out, “… not  _cool_ cool. People like Liza are cool,” she paused for a long second, frowning, then looked up again, “but I feel like me and Liza could really click next year if I go.”  
  
Annalise leaned back on her heels, “Be careful Seiko,” she said, her voice dull, flat, and fluttering out of her lips. “Girls like her may be just as the seem and nothing more.”  
  
“What?” She made a face, “What? They seem really cool and are?” Seiko just snorted, “You should get out more…” She took a step forward, hunching her shoulders slowly, “you could come too. Maybe you’d actually like it.”  
  
Annalise shook her head, as if breaking out of a daze. “Where?”  
  
“Elmswood,” she said simply, “I mean, June is going too. Who is the worst and won’t stop bringing up every embarrassing thing that’s ever happened, but it’s fine. We could gang up against her.” She gave a devilish grin, “You could tell her some bogus fortune like her life line has a huge rude gorilla in her future.”  
  
Annalise frowned deeply and looked down at her knees, “I can’t.” She said simply, “I do school here.”  
  
“But-”  
  
“I can’t.” She said sternly and took her newspaper inside without another word.

The conversation ended for that day.

—————–

Time seemed so slow when she was young, but it passed just as it always did: one drop at a time. She graduated elementary school, spent a summer lazing around the pool and trying out things like rollerblading and science camp. She scraped her knees at both and said she wasn’t ever going back.

Her uncle gave her a cheap camera to take videos on, it was better than her phone and she became obsessed with dressing her sister up and filming her destroying cereal-box cities.

She kept her delivery route, Bobby quit that year and Seiko got a raise, she kept attending monthly pizza nights. Mr. Simmons added brownies to the meal, he winked and said ‘not the type you kids like though.’ He was still somehow convinced they were preteens with a thing for weed.

Seiko felt like she knew everything and absolutely nothing.

Liza Mayweather seemed excited to start Elmswood with her, Seiko didn’t know what to make of that. She entered Middle School with new ripped jeans, a skrillex t-shirt, and knock-off vans, sick with excitement, but fall soon sunk into normalcy.

She was the worst player on the soccer team, but they gave her the job of taking videos for the games, she started editing them to Queen songs and shatter sound effects. The girls laughed themselves silly when she added fake bloopers and ‘mm whatya say’ whenever they missed a goal.

Her sister turned 3 and her mother fretted about her speaking properly and walking and potty-training and everything she could fret about. Kingsley wrote Seiko a heavily worded text about not spending enough time together and ‘forgetting him.’ Seiko broke out the ‘super pinky promise’ to assure him they weren’t going anywhere. She got a hairline fracture on her wrist from a bike crash.

She wore a helmet after that.

Annalise, Annalise remained the same. A picture on her porch, in a variety of pajamas and flat expressions, sometimes she showed her new earrings or a good book she read.

Sometimes Annalise started speaking so quickly and emphatically that Seiko couldn’t stop her, like an overflowing dam. Sometimes she barely said anything at all, dark sleepless bruises under her eyes and something bumpy under her words.

“Are you writing on yourself?” Seiko pointed out one day, looking at a few words printed over Annalise wrist, inky and precise, Annalise quickly left after that.

She was still a strange girl in a strange house. And it didn’t change.

——————

Seiko was 13, it was the second semester of 7th grade. She was breaking out on her chin, sweating through her shirts, and wearing lumpy sports bras that made her feel like a padded grandma. She had refused to let the fitting-room lady measure her so she just guessed her size and fled like The Other Man out of his lover’s bedroom window.

Her mother gave her the longest lecture of her life about periods and babies, Seiko turned two shades of green and swore up and down that this didn’t have anything to do with her. Her mom gave a tampon demonstration.

Liza got a boyfriend. No one else did.

And something changed.

Seiko’s mom said she was getting too old for paper routes, but Seiko kept on, she knew the way, she knew the drill, it was fine money. June quit the paper route that year, so it was just her, Katy, and all the new kids they started to ignore.

And something changed.

It was spring, smelling green and loud and filled with a type of hope that carried on with arbitrary spinning of the world into the sun. Seiko had a history report due and a split-lip from a soccer ball to the face, she barely looked at the houses she delivered to anymore.

Annalise was standing at the edge of her porch, an enormous smile spread across her usually grim features. She waved excitedly when Seiko arrived.

“Come come,” she leaned forward on her tiptoes and gestured, “Come up, I have news.”  
  
Seiko raised her eyebrows, “Oh?”  
  
Annalise bounced in place, she seemed more full today, like the light had been pumped back into her. Seiko reached the side of the porch, Annalise clapped her hands together, “I got your friend in.” She burst out like a party popper, like Seiko would know what that meant.  
  
Seiko tried to smile back, “You got my… friend in?” She wracked her brain for what that could mean.

Annalise visibly sagged, “You don’t remember.”  
  
Seiko put her hands up, “No, no, just… jog my memory maybe?”  
  
Annalise gave a forceful sigh, “You don’t remember.” It looked like an out-and-out pout.

Seiko leaned on the side of the porch, “Tell me about,” she grinned and rose up toward Annalise, “kids these days, amiright? Can’t remember a thing without smartphones.”

Annalise gave a quick smile and then trained herself back into a pout, “You’re the one that told me about her.” She folded her arms over her chest.

Annalise blinked a couple times, “Who?” She couldn’t even place a name.

“Katy Mendoza!” She said clippedly, “You had me dig up all her letters years ago.”  
  
Seiko’s mouth fell open, “You actually looked for them?”  
  
“Of course I did,” Annalise defended, lifting her chin up and looking away, “no faith.”  
  
Seiko lit up, “You actually looked for them!”

Annalise huffed, “All for nothing it seems.”  
  
“No, no,” she tossed the paper on their doorstep to pay proper attention to Annalise, “You, you got her a spot?”  
  
Annalise grew a slim smile, almost sly. “It took awhile. My mom has a long waiting list, but, well,” she puffed up, “That girl kept sending letters and I kept putting them at top of the stack.” She grinned widely, “It finally paid off.”  
  
“Wow!” Annalise clapped, she hadn’t talked to Katy in three weeks, but still. “Woah, that’s so cool! You made it happen.”  
  
Annalise fluffed her hair, “Of course I did.”  
  
They both laughed and spring seemed more spring than it did before.  
  
“Watch tonight,” Annalise beamed, chest puffed out.  
  
“Yeah, of course,” Seiko nodded so hard she thinks pez candies might start shooting of out her neck, “I will!”

Annalise seemed to have a long memory, longer than hers, and she preened like a shiny hen at a peacock competition.

—————–

Seiko was 13 and lying on her stomach in front of the TV. They had gotten more channels in the last few years, her little sister liked PBS and their mom compromised.

“Don’t forget,” her mom called from the kitchen, “it’s your night to put the dishes away.”   
  
“I know mom,” she called back, “It’s just a half-hour program.”  
  
Her mom walked back and forth between rooms, “And put away your cleats.”  
  
“I already did!”  
  
“Then what did I just step on in the hallway?” They were still in the same smarmy small apartment.

“Ugh,” Seiko quickly got to her feet and rushed to put her cleats back in her room, just as the psychic’s jingle came on.

_‘Your future is waiting, your future is written. Sit down with Madame Lynn and hear the infinite.’_

It reminded her of a slightly more-spooky car sales jingle.

“Are you really watching this?” Her mom stood on the cusp of the living room, taking the time to stop and comment.

“A friend is on.” Katy had almost fainted when she was told she would actually be on TV. That she would find out about her love line, solve her heart’s sickness and find out the truth- apparently she had never given up on that.

Seiko placed herself in front of the screen, propped up and focused. Rei sat in the other room  and audibly baballed a very long story to their father about animals and bugs she had recently seen. Her father clapped along at every other full sentence and Seiko turned the volume up.

The stage was brightly lit and a dark velvet screen filled the background, a single plain table sat in the center of the space, it was covered in a red cloth decorated with various symbols. She recognized some of them as Kanji and even hindu script, Seiko snorted at that.

The unseen announcer reminded her the show was filmed in front of a live audience. The town of Rogers was waiting.

A woman walked on, she was tall and upright and slightly ‘handsome’ if you would use that word. She wore a long burnt-orange silk scarf around her black hair, enormous round glasses, and a deep maroon shawl around her thin shoulders. Seiko had seen her around on local signs and a couple video clips, but it had never occurred to her that this woman didn’t look terribly like Annalise.

Her complexion was darker (which wasn’t hard), her eyes were deeper set in her face and features pasted on at different mismatching angles. She looked like a collaborative art piece from college students whereas Annalise reminded her of a classical European painting.

Though, of course, Madame Lynne’s entire demeanor and disjointed look fit her persona, the smalltown psychic with otherworldly powers. Despite the cheesy effects, numerous gaudy bangles, and over-the-top opera gloves she wore, Seiko could see why people thought she was a witch.

She carried herself like that, like some other strange force swept across the stage, swaying and stalking over like a suave cat.

“She’s such a hack,” Seiko’s mom tutted from the background. “I’ve seen those tarot card she uses online. They aren’t even an original set.”

“Sshhush,” Seiko waved her hand through the air frantically, “it’s about to start.” Her mom just humphed but didn’t move to leave.

Madame Lynne looked directly at the camera as she spoke, solid and imposing. That part reminded her of Annalise at least.  
  
“We have a special guest tonight, an anxious soul in need,” Madame Lynne’s ghostly voice rang out, enrapturing and deep. “A young woman with woes and a heart full to bursting. Her path ahead is uncertain and she has come to us for counsel, a dedicated fan and Rogers local, please welcome Katy Mendoza!”

Katy walked onto stage with her huge eyes and quivering lips and mousy nose, she looked just as unsure of herself on TV as she did everywhere else. She picked her way across the stage and took her time sitting down, trembling slightly.

“I’m such a big fan of yours Madame Lynne,” she whispered in her cricket voice, the microphone had been placed extra high on her collar. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I’m sure my dear,” she patted her hand warmly, “I’m happy to help.”  
  
The show preceded much as Seiko assumed it would. Katy gushed to the psychic, explaining her heart’s dilemma: that no one had ever like her, that she was too ugly and shy and would never find love.

Madame Lynne assured her that she was lovely and that anyone who valued her outsides more than her insides weren’t worth her time. Seiko liked that part, Katy brimmed with some fragile hope and a watery heartfelt smile played across her face whenever Madame Lynne spoke. That was something.

And then they got to the reading.

Seiko understood very little of it, she had gone through a brief witch phase herself but most of it had been reading about the occult and trying to summon cthulhu. She hadn’t gotten to tarot.

Madame Lynne brought out her stack of shiny golden cards and shuffled them in place, her long fingers quick and fastidious, almost mesmerizing as she began to hum. This was the pinnacle of the whole show, Seiko watched in a trance.

Katy drew six cards and Madame Lynne placed them out across the table methodically, explaining each card’s meaning in relation to Katy’s past and present. Seiko glazed over during this part, most of it she already knew: a controlling father, several nervous habits, a desperate wish for confidence. Seiko understood. However, Katy started weeping when she pulled out the sixth card and final card, it was revealed to be the ten of pentacles.

“It’s certain,” Madame Lynne held her hands and patted the top, “This reading is clear: true love is certain.”

Katy let out a hiccuping sob and wiped at her eyes, Seiko smiled a real smile for the other girl instead of rolling her eyes. Love wasn’t exactly on Seiko’s ‘important things’ list, but this felt like something else.

“Will I have kids?” Katy asked next in a small voice, “And a house with a yard? For my daughter to run around in.”  
  
Madame Lynne blinked a couple times, confused for a moment, then probably broke some sort of rule and held out the cards once more, “Let’s find out. Hold your question clearly in your mind and pick another.”  
  
Katy bit her lip, concentrating for a full minute, she drew a seventh card. It had a shimmery large wheel in the center, someone in the audience gasped. It was the wheel of fortune, Madame Lynne frowned, “It is uncertain.”  
  
“Oh…” Katy hung her head, face falling.

“But don’t fret young dear,” Madame Lynne reassured, “your future is your own. If you want a daughter, you may certainly still have one.”  
  
Katy looked back at Madame Lynne, fixedly, worshipfully. Seiko had an odd feeling about this.

“Did it work out for you Madame, do you have any kids?” She asked earnestly. Seiko’s mouth fell open, no doubt Katy remembered the conversation they had all those years ago. “Did you want them too?”  
  
Madame faltered for the first time that night, a sudden slippage of her expression and poise, heavy brow furrowing. “Well,” she folded her hands in the lap and then reverted to calm smile, maternal even. “Yes, how perceptive you are. I also wanted a daughter, much like you.” She leaned over to pet Katy’s hair, Katy leaned into it.

“And you got her? It worked out.” Katy nodded as if that answered everything.  
  
Madame Lynne gave a heavy sigh, “You’re future is your own, young one.” She said slowly, “But it was not to be for me. I wanted a daughter, yes, but I’m afraid it never materialized in my fortunes. My flock are my children now.”  
  
Seiko froze in place,  _didn’t have a daughter?_  
  
_Why would she say that?_  Of course she had a daughter, Seiko had been chatting with every week since she was 10.

“But I thought… you had one?” Katy seemed confused, a murmur went through the crowd, something was off.

Seiko’s eyes bulged at the whole affair, Madame Lynne looked dead into the camera, cutting and direct, somehow loaded. “I’m not sure where you got that idea…”  
  
Seiko’s heart dropped, she breathed in through her nose and felt somewhat chilled.  _What did that even mean?_  
  
Why would Madame Lynne not acknowledge Annalise?  
  
Seiko’s head spun and she quickly turned off the TV, not even finishing the program. Something was off.

—————–

Seiko reluctantly approached the wedding-cake house the next day, feet scraping against the pavement and path zig-zagging. She’d chosen not to ride her bike that day, even if walking was the equivalent of taking a rowboat when a speedboat was available.

_I don’t have a daughter._

Seiko still had no idea what that meant. Was Madame Lynne hiding her? Was Seiko mistaken about the house? Had she been seeing things?

Seiko had a couple new things in her search history, such as ‘Signs You Are Actually Communing with the Dead’ and ‘How Good is Recent Hologram Technology?’ She almost asked her mom if she had ever had vivid hallucinations growing up.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

She took her time unlatching the large iron gate and closing it behind her, sneaking onto the property with light feet. She kept her eyes trained on the stoic grey house as she approached. There was no one outside that morning, no one in sight at all, that was very very out of the ordinary.

Seiko’s shoulders rose like the haunches of spooked cats, she drew closer sluggishly, had something gone wrong? She made it to the front porch and slid the newspaper toward the door in the way a blackjack dealer slides cards to players about to bust.  
  
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the door finally swung open, Annalise hurried out onto the porch as usual, cheeks slightly flushed.

“There you are,” She blinked a couple times.

“Annalise!” Seiko clutched her heart as the other girl appeared.

Annalise just leaned over the porch, “Did you see the show last night?”  
  
“I-I did,” Seiko bit her lip, fishing for the words to say next.  _Your mother tells people you don’t exist._  That seemed like a bad place to start.

“I hope you liked it.” Another voice input from behind the doorway, deep and direct.  
  
If seeing Annalise that morning was disconcerting, seeing Madame Lynne hovering behind her in the doorway was even more so. She was wearing a deep blue bathrobe, a towel over her black hair and several fat rings on her fingers, her makeup was gone and so were her huge glasses.

She seemed plain now, no less spooky and uncanny, but more simple. She frowned slightly and fixed Seiko with a hard look, Seiko squirmed in place.

“Here’s your paper ma’am!” She shoved the power toward the woman. “I hope you’re having a good morning.” She was suddenly sure she was sweating through her lumpy sports bra.

“Indeed,” Madame Lynne’s lip curled back, brown eyes narrowing. Annalise stood uncomfortably between them as they exchanged a charged look. “I’m glad my daughter has friends.”  
  
Seiko blinked blankly at that, the back of her neck prickling.

“But, please, be mindful.” Madame Lynne put one bony hand on Annalise’s cheek, dragging her fingers down in a caress. “She’s my only daughter and I treasure her, her constitution is… weak.” Madame Lynne pursed her lips, “And we are a private family.”  
  
The older woman seemed to be nudging at something Seiko didn’t quite grasp, Seiko kept meeting her gaze and looking sheepishly away again. “I… I understand.” She didn’t understand.  
  
“Good,” Madame Lynne straightened up, “I hope you won’t go spreading any rumors then our little paper girl.” She smiled toothily, “Apparently the town already thinks I’m a witch. And a bad one at that!” She laughed richly and Seiko tried to join in.

“They do say… silly things.” Seiko was starting to suspect this woman was a witch.

“We’ll have to see you tomorrow then Seiko,” Madame Lynne reached for the door, “Say goodbye now Annalise.”  
  
Annalise waved limply, looking rather off-put. “See you Seiko.”  
  
Seiko waved back, wondering if she should mouth something or break into interpretive dance, but the door swung shut and Seiko was left there- confused and little taken back.

_We’re a private family._

Seiko still had questions.

—————–

Madame Lynne chaperoned their conversations from then on, showing up at the door in her  lofty imperial bathrobe and lingering just behind Annalise. Seiko had no idea why.

Their conversations became a lot more bland and short, about the weather or the morning headline or even schoolwork of all things. Annalise was learning advanced algebra apparently, because of course she was.

Madame Lynne took up a lot of the space.

‘I hear you’re on the soccer team Seiko.’

‘I hear you struggle in social studies, perhaps give this book a try…’

‘I hear you like movies.’

Like, yes? Of course she liked movies. Seiko barely had any proper answers, it felt like she was filling in multiple choice bubbles and it kept coming up red ink. She fumbled through nonetheless and then left. Somedays Annalise didn’t speak at all.

—————

Time slipped by, Seiko got caught up in school drama, after school practice, and her little sister’s new nightmares about a jello monster that lived under their carpet.

She was 14 and in the last year of Middle School, she already knew she was going to Dale High school with all the other Elmswood students this time.

It was the tailend of winter, a grey day, grey and quiet and her feet crunched through the two inches of snow with every step. She was no longer ten and filled with bustling excitement, she was used to waking up at 5am, but that didn’t mean she liked it anymore.

Seiko yawned with enough force to suck in a small planet and barely noticed where she threw the newspapers anymore. Her aim was good enough, but they usually bounced and it was up to God and Jesus Christ where they landed after that.

She yawned again and checked her cellphone. Maria was mad at Cynthia for talking to her boyfriend last night after the game, but it’s not like Cynthia started it. He talked to her first and she was just laughing at his jokes to be polite.

The group chat went on and on, Seiko wished they could just go back to sending memes and silly pictures of their coach. But Cynthia had apparently also tugged on Matt’s sleeve and put a hand on his chest, people were taking sides.

Seiko was caught up in the drama of the little team when she reached the wedding-cake house. It was empty that morning and Seiko frowned, preparing herself for another brief ‘mom conversation.’

She reached the door and put the paper neatly down, raising her eyebrows when no one greeted her at all, all the lights were off. She took a second to dawdle and stand there. This was different.

She was about to turn around and stomp her way to the next house when the door finally swung open.

“Good morning,” Madame Lynne stood in the doorway, black bangs loose and smile plastered across her face unevenly. “Annalise is sick this morning, but she sends her regards.”  
  
Seiko just nodded, bobbing her head a bit to try and see past Madame Lynne, someone was standing on the stairs. Madame Lynne took a step to block her view.

“Have a nice day now Seiko.”  
  
Seiko shifted again, the figure on the stairs shifted as well, a pair of pale legs came into view. They looked off- dented, shadowed, Madame Lynne raised her arms up, the wings of bathrobe block the whole view.

“Yes ma’am,” she finally said, “Tell Annalise to get better soo-”  
  
The door closed in her face before she even finished the sentence. There were quick footsteps from inside but nothing more.

Seiko sniffed loudly and turned. She was thinking of quitting her paper route.

She was almost in high school after all.

She didn’t see Annalise after that.

————–

“You’re turning fifteen,” her mom was folding laundry on the couch. “You’ll need a real job this summer.”  
  
“I have a real job mom, I get tips.” Seiko folded her socks haphazardly and then moved onto the next pair. “And I told you, I don’t know.”  
  
“Don’t know what?” Her mom frowned sourly, “That bike of yours is rusting and your father is too old to keep repairing it for you.”  
  
Seiko rolled her eyes, “I walk most days now anyway.” She shook her head.

“Well,” her mom hummed loudly, “Why walk when you could drive?”  
  
Seiko sat all the up, hands falling down to her lap as her mom said it. “Seriously?” Her face lit up, “It’s time? You’ll teach me?”  
  
Seiko’s parents hadn’t mentioned anything about her driving yet, even as all the other kids started to get lessons.

Her mom tilted her chin up proudly, “Driving is a privilege,” Seiko vibrated in place at that, “And for girls who need to get places. Such as to real jobs. Did you know my friend at the grocery store is hiring?”  
  
Seiko just nodded emphatically, “Awesome! Yes.”

She would be in high school in just one month, Seiko decided she needed a cooler persona beyond ‘delivery girl who owned a camera and sucked at soccer.’ Now she could be the girl who drove her parents 1999 beat-up corolla.

Or at the very least didn’t bike to school every day.

——————-

“Yes, ma’am, this is my last day.” Seiko gave her most winning smile to old Mrs. Hankla, the paperbag-textured woman humphed, frowned, and told her to wait there a moment. Mrs. Hankla put down her watering hose and went inside without turning it off. She came back outside with a twenty.

“Buy yourself something nice,” Mrs. Hankla seemed to swat the air in front of her and handed the bill over, “and don’t go spending it on candy and chocolates for some boy. That’s how they get ‘ya.”

“Oh yeah, I hear you,” Seiko laughed and pocketed the money as she was on her way. “Thanks Miss H!” She called, “Look after Nooky for me.”  
  
The woman just grunted in reply and it was like every other morning, but now she had a twenty.

A surprising number of people were up and about that morning, preening their lawns, checking their mail languidly, and stretching for a morning run. It was one of the last weeks of summer and everyone from sports nuts to grumpy dads in nothing but boxer shorts were enjoying the final days of truly delicious sunshine.

Seiko even had a little hop in her step, it was her last round ever and her first job really had treated her well. Even if she had become later and later with each year, did people really need their papers at 6am sharp? Not according to her they didn’t.

Seiko climbed the small hill and tried not to think about the middle house on Townshend street. The one that looked like a wedding cake.

 _It’s just another house,_  she told herself carefully.  _It’s not even goodbye forever._

She opened the fairygate slowly and carefully made her way up, the white doors were closed with no one there to greet her. But that had become normal.

Seiko placed the paper down and lingered at the door for another moment, was it rude to knock? Was it more rude to not tell them?  
  
She impulsively reached out, “Hi Lynne’s!” She knocked three times, “I just wanted to tell you, this is my last day.” She nodded at herself, “It’s been nice being your paper girl! Our talks have been nice, I mean, I hope… well I hope you have a nice day! Tell Annalise…”  
  
She petered out, she didn’t know what to tell Annalise. _I hope you find a way out of this house? I hope one day you look a little less lonely? Someone cares about you?_

Her heart sank, she couldn’t say that.

 

“Bye!” She finished lamely and turned to leave, squishing down any lingering emotions of what this would mean. She quickly skid down the driveway and back toward the road, she had her rounds to finish.

Seiko half-expected the door to open or a voice to call after her at the last second, nothing but silence and bird calls chased her down the road and around the corner.

Seiko finished delivering her last paper and loitered at the end of Greenbriar, taking one last look at her old stomping grounds. She turned her phone camera around:  _very last day at my childhood job!!_  She captioned a snapchat with her empty bag and threw up a peace sign for the hell of it.

That’s when a series of hurried footsteps thumped down the sidewalk, clumsy and stumbling on the pavement. Seiko whipped around to see a young woman in soft white pants and an overly-large apricot sweater standing there. Seiko jammed her phone in her pocket and stood up straight.

Her curls were longer, softly falling past her shoulders and down her back, she was taller as well, taller than Seiko by then. Puberty had seemed to hit her like a lovers kiss, all sweet clean skin and swan-length limbs. Brushstrokes of youth whereas Seiko felt like puberty had swung at her wildly with a baseball bat: all hairy legs and spotty acne and terrifying vivid red dreams you couldn’t repeat to anyone.

Seiko’s mouth was hanging open as she took Annalise in, she tried to stifle her thoughts before they even began, seeing the young woman out in full sunlight, breathless and reaching for her. Lovely as any dream Seiko had ever had.

Seiko swallowed in the way you choke down medication with a swollen throat.

“Don’t go,” Annalise’s dark blue eyes were huge and searching, she panted, “Don’t go.”  
  
Seiko sucked in a breath and dashed back up the street, “Annalise,” she smiled widely, pausing just in front of her, “it’s weird to see you not on your porch. How are you feeling? I haven’t… seen you in awhile.”

Annalise just shook her head, “don’t say this your last day.” Her voice sounded wet with emotion and she pawed at her face forcefully, though it didn’t look like there were any tears there.

Seiko’s shoulders relaxed and she smiled faintly, “Sorry,” she swallowed, “I need a different job and this one… doesn’t really fit anymore.”  
  
Annalise shook her head more vigorously, pressing her lips together tight as an angry iron line. “It was,” she whispered, “I waited for you every day. It was the best part of my day.”

Seiko’s chest tightened, a pain shooting through her upper body.  _I know you were lonely._

She rubbed her shoulder, “Why don’t I come visit? Or better yet, let’s hang out sometime, like, I dunno, get pizza or walk to the park or go swimming-”  
  
“My mom wouldn’t allow it,” Annalise was pawing at her face again, hiccuping. “She thinks I’m not ready.”  
  
Seiko frowned decidedly, she touched the other girl’s wrist, it was dry and rough. “Annalise,” she said seriously, “Is there something you’re not telling me? Is your mother,” she looked around and leaned in, whispering between them, “Trapping you in there? Are you okay?”  
  
Annalise’s bottom lip trembled, “It’s not like that. You wouldn’t understand,” she took a step back, “I don’t like to go out.”

“I know,” Seiko’s brow folded in, “But, I mean, we could still be friends! Let’s try and f-”  
  
“Annalise!” A voice carried down the street and both their heads jerk up, a woman in a long sweeping robe and strappy heels was running down the sidewalk. “What are you doing? Look at the sun coming up, are you even wearing sunscreen?”  
  
Annalise scowled back at her, “Here.” She turned back to Seiko, “You forgot this.”  
  
She slipped a wad of cash into Seiko’s hands and Seiko just blinked, she looked back up, “Wait.” She said thinly, “We need to talk. I can help you, I can do something.”  
  
“My mom is coming,” Annalise turned, “Thank you Seiko. Thank you for everything.” Her words were heavy and brimming with other unsaid things.  
  
But just like that Annalise was jogging back to her mom, calling out tersely. “I’m fine Catherine.” She seemed to snap, “See? No damages, God, you’re so dramatic.”  
  
Seiko watched the interaction mutely, trying to piece together whatever that all meant. Would a trapped girl talk to her mother like that? Would an abused girl simply leave again?  
  
Annalise took her mom’s hand and they walk back toward their house hand in hand, Madame Lynne didn’t even spare a glance for Seiko. It was Seiko’s last day after all and she’d be gone like a coins into a Las Vegas slot machine.

When Seiko looked down at the money in her hand there was a small slip of paper as well: a note written in neat fine handwriting.

unicornstormbringer773@comcast.net – write me.

Seiko blinked at the message for a long few seconds, “unicorn… stormbringer?” She broke into a smile and something jumbled in her chest like elegantly tossed puzzle pieces. She had gotten an email.

——————-

_Dear Annalise,  
  
So… about that email address. Where exactly are you hiding your horn? And are you always summoning storms or just when you’re in a bad mood? Did that address come with glitter and like, rainbow stickers?_

_Kidding._

_Are you alright though? Do you need anything?  
  
From,_

_Your delivery girl_

She got a response back right away.

_Dear Delivery girl,_

_Haha. For one thing, I needed something my mom would never guess- and for another I just needed any email at all, it seemed like a good idea when I was 12._

_How is ‘lucyliusloveinterest’ any better?? And who is Lucy Lui?  
  
No, no, I’m fine. My mother is just overprotective, it’s complicated, don’t worry about me._

_How was your day? I stopped getting a lot of updates from you, you’re going to high school soon, right? How was graduation? How was the soccer season?  
  
From,_

_Your Least Favorite Former Unicorn Enthusiast_

Seiko grinned to herself and started typing away, she imagined she was a 19th century working girl keeping correspondence with an old-fashioned bedridden rich socialite. You know, instead of texting like normal people.

 

_Dear Unicorn Salivator,_

_For one, the fact you never leave your house is no excuse for not knowing Lucy Liu, for shame!! (Elementary? Charlie’s Angels?? )_

_The address is an inside joke from a rather out of control sleepover. I’ll never live it down, but I will make a joke email around it! Haha, nothing serious, just a lifetime of embarrassment nbd_

_Day was fine, graduation was pretty awesome, I got my picture in the yearbook TWICE, one for jump-high fiving the mascot and the other for a gatorade incident. Soccer kind of sucked, too much drama and our coach wanted us to get ‘serious,’ whatever that means._

_We got to state tho, then immediately knocked out of state, figures_

_I might not do it next year, but Liza says practice will suck without me and that I can’t leave her, maybe it will be different in High School, so I guess I’ll endure. I GUESS_

_High school is gonna be hella different tho, I swear, I’m buying an electric scooter (eventually) and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna ace social studies for once, go to a few dances, maybe break an arm and get everyone to sign the cast, move to Peru and open a coffee shop, you know_

_How are you? Your mom see my future recently? Read any good books?  
  
Come get pizza with us some time, I promise that public school kids don’t bite _ _Yours,_

_Soccer Dud, High School Stud_

_Dear Dud,_

_Sorry, pizza sounds lovely, but it will have to wait for later._

_As for the soccer, I have to say…_

——–

High school passed rotely: a series of highs and lows, almost failing math for a hot second, quitting the soccer team, rejoining the soccer team, getting the flu, getting ask out- turning down someone for the first time. And emails. Lots of emails.

Seiko had no idea how she could write paragraphs on paragraphs to a girl she had known for only minutes at a time in middle school. But maybe it made sense, maybe Seiko wanted it to make sense.

_Why does her mother keep her indoors? Was any of it okay?_

The emails became a constant in her life as the first year of high school dragged on.

 

_Dear Dior Heathen (who God hath abandoned),_

_Uuuugh, my mom is bugging me so much recently. She’s obsessed with Rei and her elementary school play, but barely remembers to even take me out to drive. It’s always ‘wait your turn Seiko’ and ‘talk to your dad about it.’ He’s such a space case when I do, he keeps pretending to lose the car keys and makes a big deal of it (or he’s not pretending??)._

_This whole semester is screwed, high school is the worst Annalise, I’m so jealous of you being homeschooled._

_The video and film club keep outvoting me for what short film we make, no one wants to do my alien thriller murder project. NO TASTE. June’s in that club. Did I mention June? We used to do paper delivery stuff together_

_She’s the worst. And she keeps wanting to do this romcom she wrote!! It’s based off her dumb supernatural fanfiction- I swear to God it is. She’s only a sophomore, but claims to have the most ‘seniority.’ She’s also in the lbgt+ club and says that also makes her ‘the authority on art,’ whatever that means, and she keeps trying to get me to join >:(((_

_For the record, JUST BECAUSE I HAVE SHORT HAIR AND PLAY SOCCER DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!! She’s so pushy, and presumptuous!! dating is like… the last thing on my mind_

_Hbu? You finish that book about the secret life of trees? Do they do anything spicy, like squirrel espionage? Tree murder plots? Huh?_

_OR how about… your LOVE LIFE? Your mom’s new ‘Loves Fortune’ show is all the rage at school, tell me she’s at least tried to read your future and it’s like… a horse (unicorn maybe, hmm?) husband. Or probably a lesser nobility of a small country, aim high A!!_

_Anyway, gotta go count my $$$, I want to go to movies this weekend and I didn’t get that grocery store job (since no one will teach me to drive!!) and I’m still living off my paper route money. THE CRUELTY OF IT ALL *this is where I swoon and fall to the ground, I can’t go to the movies, people are weeping, Mr. Dior is there, he tells me I am terribly unfashionable*_

_Yours,_

_Your Impoverished Vehicle-less Friend_

 

_Dear Marooned Stranger,_

_You poor dear, I wonder what it’s like to not be able to go anywhere (*she loudly coughs into her hand*). I wouldn’t be too jealous of being homeschooled dear, it gets rather… suffocating to be honest. Involving many rules and worksheets and sorting through her vast collection of dusty tomes and ‘elixirs,’ Catherine is going from overbearing to class A-hysteric._

_Everything worries her lately! At least her new show keeps her busy, out more, trust me, it’s a nice breather._

_You claim to not have dating on your mind, but this is the third time you’ve asked me about a love life who do you think I’m going to meet all the way up in my room? The new delivery boy doesn’t even smile and the birds outside my window are assholes, no one likes an early-morning screamer._

_So no. No love life._

_But I wouldn’t be so close-minded of that club if I were you! I was reading ‘Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers’ for my social studies curriculum and it was truly fascinating. I know you never read my recommended books, but give it a try.Who knows, maybe you can usurp June at her club! Viva la non-pushy girls ;)._

_Also, remind me of when your birthday is. I want to send you something._

_Yours,_

_Loveless in Confinement_

 

_Dear Inmate,_

_Sucks to be yoooooouuuu. Haha, but I’m serious, for real, for really serious. Break out. She can’t keep you there forever!! What are you, almost 16? Let’s go out, get a milkshake, knock over a trash can, break loose_

_Hell, we could go to a ‘scene,’ Kingsley invited me to one of those recently_

_He’s into ‘scenes’ now, and smoking apparently which is really gross but his mom says he’s just ‘experimenting.’ I hope she doesn’t think his new boyfriend is just an experiment too (see?? I’m not close-minded, my friend from elementary school is gay. So there). I haven’t seen him in awhile so it will be like a big ‘ol reunion_

_Also, sorry bb but you already missed my bday, it’s November 15th and it’s almost April lol. But you have to come to my next one!! The big 1 and 6, hopefully I’ll finally be able to drive by then, if the lord deigns to bless me with any indulgences at all adkfjagjgp_

_You can still send me a present tho!! I accept late-work, no points taken off :3c_

_I’ll try usurping June too, maybe not at her tiny lbtq club  but I WILL have my alien-thriller-murder movie come to life!!_

_Liza keeps asking me about film club, I think she can tell my heart is like not into soccer at all at the moment. I dunno, I keep thinking we’ll drift apart after middle school but every time I think about like, not seeing her, or not talking to her, it just sucks. You know? Really sucks_

_Ugh, June would throw a big ‘I told you so’ party if she saw me writing that, and then I’d have to smack her haha_

_I’m serious about you getting out of there tho, I’m real about it, we should stop talking about it and just do it, you know?_

_If you do want some outside-time meet me next Friday, at the end of Greenbriar by the entrance sign, I’ll wear my neon green windbreaker so you can recognize me (and since it’s an AMAZING jacket and NOT an eyesore like my mom says). At 7, k?_

_We’ll do whatever._

_Anyway, yours,_

_Your Sucker-Punching Sad Sap of a Friend_

_(Outside Greenbriar!! 7, don’t tell your mom or anything haha, I’ll get you home before 10 promise)_

 

_Dear Seiko,_

_I’d like that. I’d really really like that._

_I’ll bring your present then, by the sign, 7 O’clock , I’ve been waiting for this for a long time._

_Yours,_

_Annalise_

—————

Seiko stood in the gentle spring air, the last rays of the sun bleaching across the land, shining in between the houses and warming the back of her neck. She took deep even breaths.

She was wearing her neon green windbreaker, holding a stuffed unicorn toy, and wearing her hair up in the shortest ponytail this side of Chicago. Maybe if she pretended to have long hair her heart wouldn’t beat so fast. Like hummingbirds caught in a wind turbine.

 _It’s just hanging out,_  she hunched her shoulders over.  _It’s just a silly toy I got her._

Freshmen year of highschool hadn’t gone like she expected. Sure, she had gotten ‘involved,’ made some friends and lost some, but she wasn’t popular and she wasn’t ‘taking the town.’ She didn’t really feel like anything at all. She was still just the girl making video edits with cartoon sound effects and photoshopping wiener dog faces over the woodshop teachers face.

She was still just Seiko.

Her mom wanted her to get a proper job again or she wasn’t affording new shoes for next year, she wanted her to quit soccer, Seiko wanted to quit soccer, Seiko couldn’t quit soccer. She kept looking at Liza and feeling some tasteless, nameless thing she pushed down like drowning a first born son in a bathtub.

But this wasn’t nameless. It was Seiko holding a stuffed animal around the neck and swaying back and forth in the warm breeze. It was Seiko checking her phone’s clock, again and again.

She had put on mascara, she had put on lip gloss. Ten minutes passed.

She had walked there so she wouldn’t sweat on a bike ride over. Twenty minutes passed.

She thought out what she wanted to say over and over, a simple ‘hey, you look nice.’ Thirty minutes passed.

She bought a purple and white unicorn with a sparkly horn for fifteen bucks. She waited fifty minutes.

Seiko’s arms fell to her side, she waited an entire hour for someone in a pretty white dress and expensive earrings and angry little face to show up. No one showed.

————–

_From: ToyomiStoryReloaded@gmail.com_

_Where were you? Get busted by the man on your way out? Get cold feet?  
  
Lmk, either way I’m sending you 4 videos, 3 are cute dog videos you WILL enjoy and 1 is Rick Astley. Choose wisely. *saw music plays*_

_1, 2, 3, 4_

_Yours,_

_I’ll be real with you, Im a little pissed_

_PS I hope you’re okay._

Seiko never got a reply. She didn’t get anything at all, no matter how many follow up emails she sent, no matter how many ‘just write me that you’re okay. And not trapped in a dungeon somewhere.’

‘Just write me one letter, if it’s the letter ‘c’ I’ll come get you.’

‘Just send me some smoke signals, I’ll look to the western sky’

‘Just write me at all.’

‘Annalise…?’

————

Seiko visited Annalise’s house. Something had to be done, it was the middle of the day a week later, she waited ten minutes on the sidewalk, just watching the house. She saw a blond head in the first-story window.

Seiko waved forcefully, gesturing for her to come outside- come away with her, Annalise’s head turned and their eyes met. Seiko beamed, but Annalise gave her a neutral look, all placid eyes and an uninterested twitch of her lip.

Annalise looked away after that. Simply turned her head and looked the other direction. Seiko waited another minute, but Annalise never came out to greet her.

Seiko stared at her shoes, took a deep gulping breath, and went home the long way. The way that made her legs ache and her eyes sting a little less in the night air.

—————-

Seiko was 16. It was the week of her birthday, Seiko was 16 and she couldn’t tell if she was at the top of the world or buried under a hundred pounds of dirt.

“Just come,” she heard the voice of her friend Kingsley on the phone, “One night, it’s your birthday weekend, spend it with people who like you instead of all those hetero soccer girls who put your bra in the freezer last year.”  
  
Seiko rolled her eyes, “That was just a stupid prank and they already took me to Denny’s this week on my actual birthday, bought me every flavor of pancake for your information. It was cool.” She flinched at the memory of the cold ice on her chest, but she pushed it back down. She had laughed that all off. “And what if they figure out the IDs are fake? My mom would kill me for even thinking the words ‘fake ID.’”

“Tres Beaut doesn’t even card before 11 and I know a guy,” Kingsley explained slowly, “Sei, I invited people from your school too, Liza something- you like her, right? You gotta come. What happened to that ‘fuck the man’ spirit? You’re the one that made me watch the Breakfast Club when we were ten.”  
  
Seiko gave a brief laugh, she forgot how much she missed Kingsley. Then she frowned again, “For one, Liza is definitely not coming.” She covered her eyes with her arm and groaned, “Definitely not.”  
  
“Why not?” He humphed, “I thought she was the one you-”  
  
“She’s just not coming.” Seiko growled, cringing briefly. She had finally said something, it was not the right something- she played it off as a joke.

“Perfect!” Kingsley sang, most likely putting two and two together. “You can come and let off some steam. There will be girls there who, you know, could actually like you back!”  
  
Seiko groaned into the receiver and thought about hanging up. “I don’t know what I like.” She looked away, maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. “I’ve never even kissed a girl, please, Kingsley.”  
  
“What? What about the time you called me crying on the phone about Natalie Dormer and your english teacher and those wei-”  
  
“It’s always been just a joke, a haha funny, ‘maybe Seiko doesn’t like boys’ clown joke,” Seiko looked miserably up at the ceiling, “None of it was ever meant to be serious.” Nothing ever was.

Kingsley sighed loudly, “Then it’s time.” He said resolutely, “Come to the club with me, it’ll be awesome, live a little, figure yourself out, don’t leave your old friend Kingsley to go alone to this thing.”

“Maybe.”  
  
“I think you mean yes. Yes, yes, yes,” He repeated the word like a mantra, “Say yes.”  
  
She sighed so deeply a bit of her soul might of left, “Fine.”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
The phone hung up after that.

Kingsley had become more strong-willed since back in third grade when he cried over dead bugs on the playground. Apparently he dated a Junior girl last year, briefly dropped out, stopped dating a junior girl, and now got fake IDs for a gay club. Life changed.

Seiko just looked the ceiling, eyes misting over. What if she did go? What if she spent her birthday money and drank and danced on sticky floors in the night? What if there was somebody in the smoky dark room with soft lips and warm hands that took her off to the side…

Well, but what if the gay girls didn’t like her either? Then it truly would be hopeless.

She sunk deep into her couch, the rest of her family was out at a family dinner night. She had refused to go, claiming a cold. Seiko lugged herself over to the family calendar and penned in an event: Seiko goes to Liza’s house for a sleepover, gone the whole night.

She went to bed before 8 O’Clock and thought about nothing.

———–

Friday.

There was an email in her inbox on friday, and not her school one, her old one, the one she almost forgot about. She only checked it as an old habit, one that ached like a scar and stuttered hotly in her chest.

She opened her email and something new was there.

_Dear Seiko,_

It felt like reading a ghost’s handwriting.

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it was all my fault. I was a coward, a fool, I wanted it so badly but I was so scared. I’m sorry._

_Happy birthday, I needed to tell you that. I’m so sorry and happy birthday._

_I’ve been thinking about you and your birthday and everything else._

_Let me know if you ever want to try again. I promise I’ll be ready this time, I want to try again so badly Seiko. But I understand if you don’t._

_Love,_

_Annalise._

Seiko shut her laptop with a loud ‘clack,’ tossed the entire second-hand computer under her bed, and hopped under the covers. She put her head under her pillow and screwed her eyes shut tight in order to force herself to sleep. Nothing but a pounding in her head greeted her.

She opened her computer again at 2am that night, it was dark and still as a tomb. The apartment below them was playing soft ocean music and someone was singing drunkenly on the street. Seiko couldn’t sleep, she didn’t want to sleep. She should sleep.

She wrote, despite herself.

_Dear A,_

_I get it. I think I get it, your mom, right? Sure, yeah, I’m going out this Saturday, out-out, it probably won’t be your thing, a club probably isn’t the best starter-outing_

_But, yeah, we could try again.Promise you won’t see me and blow me off again? I’m pretty delicate (and dainty, can’t you tell?) and that kind of really fucking sucked like, 6 months ago_

_If you’re actually up for it, meet us at the gas station on 25th street, we’ll pick you up along with a few beers. Hope you don’t mind._

_Yours,_

_Totally-Cool-and-Drinks-Beers-Now Seiko_

She shouldn’t have done it. She did it.

She closes her laptop again and buried the thing at the bottom of a stack of laundry.

————-

She didn’t expect anything. She told herself there was nothing to expect. She was 16 and she made her own meals, did her own laundry, and tied her own damn shoes, she got to make her own decisions.

She could go out to places where they drank and smoked and didn’t care about small apartments that smelled like burnt sneakers and damp soil.

She was 16 now. And she didn’t need ‘fairy gates’ and pale victorian girl’s trapped in wedding-cake houses that were more fantastical than real. She didn’t need bedtime stories of captive princesses.

Seiko’s heart still stopped when she saw the lithe figure under the green fluorescent lights of the gas station. She wasn’t wearing pajamas for once. She had on a knee-length white tent dress with pale yellow accents, a soft blue knit jacket loosely buttoned up her front, and a pair of ankle-length brown boots. She clutched a saddlebag brown leather purse to her side.

They were all probably name-brand with designers Seiko couldn’t place and held by a girl with poise money couldn’t by. Annalise’s dark eyes followed each car nervously, standing with her whole body tense and bathed in the eerie glow of the musty gas station.

She looked out of place against the grungy pumps and compact convenience store, candy bars, tabloids, and energy drinks framing her loose twisting golden curls. She looked out of place and more nervous than Seiko had ever seen her.

But she had come.

“Is that your girl?” Kingsley whistled, he was driving his families yellow jeep with the air of someone with enough money to replace it. “She’s like one of those fancy haunted dolls you buy in the creepy part of ebay.”  
  
Seiko shot a glare at him, “She doesn’t get out much.” She explained shortly to him, “pull over.”  
  
They drove up to the spooked girl and she froze in place, eyes wide and mirror-like, Seiko quickly rolled down the window, “what’s up hot stuff?” She said with a slight cringe.

Annalise visibly relaxed, “Seiko.” Her eyes grew soft and a faint smile played across her features. “You came.”  
  
It was simple, a moment with no time at all, crystallized and still in a way that was beyond a gas station meeting in the dark with childhood friend’s going to a drinking party.

Seiko put her hand out, “Come on up.”  
  
Annalise beamed, a faint glow coming to her cheeks, “I’m ready to go out into the world.” She declared and lifted herself up tall, “I’m not even frightened.”  
  
“You should be,” Kingsley snorted, “The world’s a fucked up place.”  
  
Seiko rolled her eyes, “don’t listen to the cynic, he’s in his ‘try everything once and become an asshole’ phase.”  
  
“Thanks Sei, you’re a peach.”

Seiko gave a short laugh, “Come on,” she opened the car door to the back seats, “We’re giving you a crash course in the outside world. Zero to a hundred real quick.”  
  
“I’m ready!” Annalise pumped her hands in the air, “Show it to me.”  
  
They all grinned with the burn of youth in their guts and chill of the frosty winter in the air. It was time to do something new.

————

Dark trees, brilliant headlights, and a stretching highway unfolded around them in long plodding stretches, Seiko held her hands- popping each knuckle one finger at a time.

She vibrated in place gently, trying to push down any building giddiness,  _it’s just a club_  she told herself,  _just a party, just a girl. So what if it was a gay club? So what if I haven’t done anything like this before?_  
  
It was thirty minutes to the nearest big-city, Springfield, and then thirty minutes back. But Kingsley had already assured them that they might need to uber their own way back.

“What’s an uber?” Annalise blinked a couple times, wide-eyed and tilting her head like a graceful meerkat leaning into their personal space. She hadn’t been convinced to put a seatbelt on yet.

Seiko and Kingsley exchanged a look, “Uhh,” they both fumbled. “A car you, pay for?”

Annalise grew a cheeky grin, “I’m kidding.” She pushed on Seiko’s shoulder, “I’m a shut-in, not a luddite.”  
  
They laughed, passed around a few unmemorable words, and turned the car’s speakers on high. They sang along to Kingsley’s father’s playlists, belting out the Beach Boys best hits when appropriate.

 _“_ _If everybody had an ocean_

_Across the U. S. A._

_Then everybody’d be surfin’_

_Like Californi-a”_

No one in that car had surfed a day in their life. They turned the song up for a reprise.

Some of the worries melted from Seiko’s gut, it was the night for this, it was the night for her, and Kingsley, and most of all Annalise. They could eat the world whole- chew on the rinds, crunch the mountains into crumbs, and swallow the oceans like candy-flavored cough syrup.

They sped across blank landscape, passing the speed limit at several points and tapping the ceiling with a kiss at every train track. They drove until a glittering mass of high buildings arose from the treetops like a sudden witch’s hut in an otherwise cursed black forest. Sprawling neighborhoods, actual indoor malls, and house lights that didn’t turn off at 9pm came into view.

Seiko took deep even breaths, “We close?” She bit her lip, “are they even expecting us?”  
  
Kingsley rolled his eyes and turned off into a highway exit, “Chill,” he put his hand out, “Relax. Everyone will take care of you, they’re cool.”  
  
“Take care of us?” Annalise knit her brow together.

Kingsley looked back in the mirror, “You know, like murder.”  
  
“No Kingsley.” Seiko groaned.

They made several turns down dinghy second-hand neighborhood roads and Seiko popped her fingers again. The neighborhoods had low gutters, indistinct sidewalks, yellow street lights the color of stale mountain dew, and five story buildings on either side- and this wasn’t even the downtown district. They were as far from Rogers as the afterlife was to the newly born.

Kingsley started humming, “here we go baby.”

They slowed down in front of a boxy cement building with glowing square windows and too many people mulling about outside. Most of them were holding lit cigarettes, chatting, and relaxed as a crowd of crows at a carcass. One of the groups were sipping out of red solo cups and watching a young man in a beanie attempt a skateboard trick.

Seiko gulped as her eyes flicked over the cups, she had tried a few beers with the soccer girls before and even a shot of whiskey she immediately coughed up through her nose.

But nothing like this.

Several cars were parked haphazardly off to the side, a jigsaw puzzle of devil-may care line-ups, a couple of stranger’s raised their heads as Kingsley’s yellow jeep pulled up.

“Y’all ready?” Kingsley winked.

Seiko set her jaw and put on a brave face on, “Let’s rock.”  
  
Kingsley just chuckled, “Alright then.” He parked, Seiko exchanged a look with Annalise.

‘You ready?’ she mouthed to the other girl and Annalise just gave a stony-faced nod. She sat up straight and threw her arms up, “Let’s murder it!” She shouted at full-volume and they laughed recklessly in reply.

Kingsley was the first one to jump out, boneless and tall as the buildings themselves. “Who has a drink for me and these lovely ladies?” He waved and some people must have recognized him as he was greeted with a brief ‘ayyyyy.’

Seiko took another moment to get her legs to work, closing her eyes, imagining the whole night laid out in front of her like a winding silver road, her feet pounding on it up and up and out. She hopped out of the car without looking back.

Seiko stumbled forward and a few people looked her over, she gave a lopsided-grin, “Sooo, there’s drinks here?”

“Sure kid,” a girl with a nose ring motioned for a guy wearing a hawaiian t-shirt.

Annalise followed her out like a lost shadow, bumping into Seiko and grabbing at her sleeve, Seiko just gave her a reassuring smile. ‘We got this,’ she mouthed in her general direction, Annalise’s expression had slipped slightly like a shifting curtain over a disturbed zoo animal.

“Yeah.”

Kingsley whooped from the makeshift parking lot, patted some hands, and handed Seiko a sort of ‘jungle juice’ he called it. She wrinkled her nose at the sweet slippery smell and fluorescent redness.

“I guess…” She gave it a long hard look.

“Oh no, none for me, not yet.” Someone tried to offer Annalise a drink too, but she politely turned it down, her cheeks paler than usual and face a little stricken.

“One of you has to break your alcohol cherry tonight,” Kingsley said loudly for the benefit of the crowd, like a showman at the fairgrounds, some other kids cheered back.   
  
“Go for it girl,” a young woman with a mohawk cackled.

Seiko looked over to Annalise, her sweeping dark eyes, small wrists, preened curls, and the upright way she carried herself. Everything.

Seiko took a deep breath, held her nose, and drank deeply, it was like every punch juice she ever had but sweeter and with a strong bitter undercurrent. She squeezed her eyes shut, blinked up, and stared into the starless night sky until it all went down.

—————

Colors and lights blurred together, sound thumped in the very center of her being like a drumbeat to her blinking eyes and swirling thoughts. Everything was slightly blurred around the edges, like a developing photo that had been shifted at the very last second.

The world was brighter, busier, and more jumbled than ever before, Seiko had a huge liquid smile spread across her face. They had made it to the club, she couldn’t remember how or why they made it, but they were there. Seiko was sitting on some black leather couches with a group of people she hadn’t known an hour ago.

In the distant past she had entered an apartment, played her first drinking game, won at flip cup, lost spectarcurly at king’s cup. She drank the whole regal cup after that to a series of chanting that began and ended with ‘chug.’ That’s when things got a little wonky around the edges.

She was sitting, smiling, and soaking in the room, there were girls moving with girls and boys whispering to each other in private corners. Couples laughed, held hands, and found places to   dig skin into skin like holy burial grounds. There was a sapling plant in her chest being watered for the first time, a sunbeam to people who never seen the sky before.

She blinked slowly, “This place is great.” That might not have been the first time she said that, “Really great.”  
  
Some girl she didn’t know was placing water in front of her, “drink up.” She smiled and watched her carefully. The girl had sparkle star berets in her stiff brown hair, a neon-troll shirt, and a thousand brightly colored bracelets. Seiko thought they started talking when she complimented the girl’s purple leather pants and somehow ended up here. Another girl sat across from them in all black and ignored the crowds for watching the multi-colored ceiling lights instead.

Seiko slowly reached for the water and chugged. It was good, lot’s of things were really good.

“Oh, there you are,” a familiar voice broke into her headspace.

Seiko turned to see a blonde girl leaning over them, trying to avoid other people swaggering behind her as they passed behind the couch. She looked perplexed, Seiko turned her smile on Annalise and reached for her.

“Annalise,” she hummed, “You look so pretty tonight, those red lights are hitting just right.” She hiccuped, “Wish I had my camera.”  
  
Annalise shook her head, “I thought I lost you.”  
  
The girl (Kendra something?) looked between them curiously, paused, and then scooted over, “Take a seat, we’re just taking a break here.”  
  
Annalise exhaled and squished into the place next to them, her eyes flitting over everything and anything.

“Had a drink yet?” Seiko asked and Annalise just shook her head in reply.

“Shame.” A girl with a dark mohawk and a cat-like curl to her lips said, sitting crossed legged on the opposite couch. She reached into her pocket and took out a cherry-red lighter in the shape of a tongue.

Seiko opened her mouth to say something, but a high-pitched yelp interrupted. Seiko turned, Annalise had reeled back, kicking her legs into the table between them and climbing the couch backward. Her eyes were huge. “Is smoking allowed in here?”  
  
The girl shrugged, nonplussed, “I know for damn sure this isn’t.” She took out a rolled up piece of paper and put it between her lips, leaning her head back and exposing an expanse of smooth skin. Seiko had the sudden urge to lick it.

“What is it?” Annalise watched her movements, lips parted and shaking anxiety apparent in her movements.

The girl grinned smoothly, “A happy stick. Sweet Mary Jane.” That was pretty obvious.

Annalise just nodded slowly, mouth falling open as the girl flicked the lighter to life, the little flame danced in place. Annalise’s eyes followed it closely as the girl lit the end of her reefer, Annalise swallowed, “My mom always warned me about that stuff.”  
  
The girl took a deep inhale, it smelled sweet and thick. Sne answered on the exhale with a huge plume wafting up, “don’t worry about it.” She grinned, “momma knows best.”  
  
Annalise watched the whole process in silence, waiting for something. Seiko herself got distracted and started playing ‘Hand Slap’ with Kendra. She kept losing.

“Your reflexes suck,” Kendra frowned, “Are you even trying?”  
  
Seiko got her hands slapped for the fifth time, a red welt forming on the top of them. She screwed her face up in concentration, “You’re more sober than me, it’s not fair.”  
  
“Drink some more water!”

Seiko rolled her eyes and complied, then a voice spoke up.

“Could I try it? I mean, if that’s okay.” Seiko swiveled around, alert, she almost forgot Annalise was sitting there, neatly tucked away in the corner and watching.

The girl, who’s name was Mikenna, slid her eyes across the room as cool as oil slicks. Her mouth split open in another grin, “Sure thing.” She languidly handed over the blunt, “Don’t inhale too deep the first time, sip it like a kiss.”  
  
Annalise’s cheeks pinked, shoulders drawing together and taking the blunt with jerky, questioning movements. She nodded briefly.

“Like this?” Annalise brought it to her lips tentatively.

“Sure.” Mikenna gestured widely.

Annalise paused, thinking for a moment, she took a long inhale in the way you give a firm handshake, solid and focused. She broke out into a sputtering cough the next second, Seiko patted her on the back as she hacked into her fist.  
  
“Slower!” Mikenna instructed.

Annalise squeezed her eyes shut, brought the blunt back up again, barely parted her lips and took a drag. The smoke came out of her mouth in a snaking puff, winding and soft, she doesn’t cough this time.

“You got it!”

“Woo! She’s an art kid now,” Annalise gave a brief whoop and they all laughed. Annalise took another hit, watching the little burning end the way preachers watch baptisms, reverent. She never took her eyes off the thing as she and Mikenna passed it back and forth, taking a series of hits.  
  
Seiko observed mutley as her agoraphobic friend learned how to smoke weed, she watched the plumes of blooming smoke and Annalise’s pupils expanding like bursting fireworks. Seiko took another shot of whiskey and laughed along with the others at some joke.

  
Her head lulled back in place and time became thick white ink in the back of her mind, spotty and barely there.

“Let’s dance.” A voice breached her blank thoughts, sudden as a lightning strike, Annalise stood over Seiko, red-eyed and limp-jointed.

“Hmm?”

“Dance,” Annalise smiled and reached for Seiko’s hand, her fingers trailing out from the abyss and grasping for her. “Out there.” Their hands slid together and Annalise tugged gently on Seiko.

“Okay,” she replied simply, the water was running through her system and her senses were coming back into place like lost puzzle pieces. Luckily, she still had enough goose left in her to let herself be led to the dance floor.

Annalise was giggling and covering her mouth, squeezing Seiko’s hand like it was a secret between them, Seiko felt weightless again. They wedged themselves onto the edge of the dance floor, a horde of shaking bodies jerking back and forth around them. The music pounded wordlessly and they fit together on the sticky white floors face to face.

They giggled for another moment before starting to rock back and forth experimentally, leaving enough room for Jesus but catching each other’s eyes and smiling. They hovered closer, shimmying and throwing their hands up to the beat.

They swayed and touched lightly and tried to collapse into something more than ‘almost.’

The breath left Seiko’s body when someone bumped into her and she stumbled into Annalise, crashing into her and their bodies coming together like peanut butter and jelly bread slices. Annalise didn’t pull away, instead intertwining their hands and pulling her close. Their bodies slid into one and a melting heat coursed through Seiko like river rapids.

She drew her eyes up and they’re rolling along to the music, sandwiched together and mixing like shaken martinis. Seiko exhaled through her nose, something feverish and prickling across her skin, their legs slotted and chests touched lightly.

She wet her lips, “this is good.” It felt dumb to say out loud, she glanced up shyly at Annalise’s loose hair and bright eyes, “You look good.” Her hands felt dumb, her feet felt dumb, and her head swam with dumb. The rest of her was completely electric.

Annalise tapped their foreheads together, “You too,” She said gently, wrapping her arms around Seiko’s neck, sweaty skin melding and eyes burning. “Thanks for inviting me out.” She leaned closer with each word, “It’s even better than I thought.” She was a hair away, sticky music and rhythm consuming them on all sides.

“No problem,” her voice cracked, she grinned up, “I just can’t believe you smoked a joint.”  
  
Annalise laughed, lighting up like a firecracker, “I just hoped to get up the nerve to get you alone.”  
  
Seiko’s heart beat so fast and hard she thought it might crash through her chest and out into the bloody world, abandoning her there forever. Her whole body froze despite the grinding and the pooling warmth inside her. “You didn’t need to do all that, I think you’re,” she floundered, mouth gaping open and closed, “…cool.” She finished weakly.

Annalise giggled and her breath is hot against Seiko’s cheek, “I think you’re amazing.” She felt the touch of almost-skin against skin, “and I’ve been waiting too long for too many things.”  
  
The actual words were drowned out by the thrumming music, but their lips crushed together with the force of honey bees into flower hearts, ready to suck the pollen dry. Gentle and needy, the first touch is rainwater against burnt hilltops.

Her lips are slightly parched, warm and pulsing like a drumbeat, it didn’t matter that they were in a dim club in the middle of a distant city with nothing but strangers around them. They kiss, clumsily, forcefully, Seiko’s thoughts jammed like cars at a traffic light and she melted into the moment.

Annalise’s hands went through Seiko’s hair and Seiko wound her arms around the taller’s girls waist and pulled her closer. They deepened the kiss in the flurry of music and sweet heaving bodies. Little noises caught in Seiko’s throat and it’s a tunnel she’s falling down, down, down into with no safety rope, tilting her chin up and getting lost.

The union was wet and sloppy, hot as fevers and bruising her chaste lips, everything a mix of sensation threading together in one infinite moment. Annalise kissed like she wanted to eat her, hands running down Seiko’s whole body and teeth nipping at jawline.

It was better than she imagined.

Annalise had never been outside her house, Seiko had never named wanting anything at all. Wanting was for people with names in the yearbook and clothes from anywhere than a thrift shop. And it was all fire ants on a honey hill, kittens rolling in catnip, turnedo storms on flat plains, none of the embrace was elegant but it really didn’t need to be.

A blur of lips and grinding and wetness, it felt like hours, someone told her later that it was hours. Seiko eventually broke the entwinement in a fit of panic and went to choke down some water. They found each other again after a brief recovery, retiring to the nearest couch and falling into one another.

Seiko burst with the world and it burst back.

Her mouth became puffy and cracked with chapped heat, neck littered with tiny purple swelling marks and everything aching with pouring light. It was all a wish of wish she had never managed before.

They took an uber home and parted with a kiss that broke her in two, Seiko walked home from Greenbriar on foot and didn’t feel a single drop of cold. She was electric.

——————

Seiko woke up the next morning and she was not electric anymore, in fact, she was very much grey thunderstorms with no lightning. Very very bleak. And loud.

She groaned and turned over in bed, groping around to close her blinds and sleep forever. Her head hurt, her knee hurt where she she kicked a chair, her back hurt, and her breath tasted like sour candy left out to rot in the sun.

She had gone out last night.

Seiko rolled over and reached for the small trash can by her bed, she sat there and felt queasy for at least a couple minutes before stumbling up to go find some water. Mercifully, her mother didn’t come check on her that morning and Seiko returned to her bed unhindered.

It was hard to process the night. It was hard to even guess why she did the things she did.

The other part of her was amazed she did them at all, was it real? Had she kissed a girl? Had she touched her hair and felt the swell of music and warmth inside her?  
  
What was that night real?  
  
Seiko replayed the moments over and over in head, even the blurry parts that were more sensation than images. But the kiss was real.

She sighed into her pillow and was helpless against the next pull of sleep, dreaming soft things in fits until her headache slowly faded into just an aching pulse. It was well past noon when she finally managed to drag herself from bed again, shower, and feel like any sort of person.

Seiko sat cross-legged on her bed in a fluffy towel, opening her email to check on her grades and any Monday assignments (she prayed she hadn’t forgot any).

Instead, she felt her soul leave her body as she read the worst email header of her life:  **Goodbye.**

Seiko could barely process the word, much less who is it was from. It had unicorn in the name.

_Goodbye._

_Thank you for everything Seiko, it means more to me than you will ever know. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Go live your life, forget me, know that I am so sorry and forget me._

_Love,_

_A_

Seiko’s eyes went wide, she sat there numbly for a full minute.

“Of course she would,” Seiko gnashed her teeth, “Of course that fakey psychic witch would,” something burned in her center, “Enough is enough Madame Lynne.” She said the name mockingly and burst to her feet, only swaying slightly in place.

Enough was enough.

She wrote out a quick manifesto and threw on some new clothes:  _children don’t belong in cages Madame L. Children deserve to see the world and make their own mistakes._

It sounded reasonable enough to her, she could start with reason at least and then resort to other things later.

Seiko still had to wait another hour before she was less groggy, less achy, and less panicky in her fritzing nerves. She knew what she had to do nonetheless.

When she finally left her room to stuff a sandwich down her throat and find her shoes her mom was waiting in the living room. She was sitting on the couch absently watching the TV, “Did you have a fun night?” She asked without looking up.

“Oh… yeah,” Seiko just nodded, “It was pretty great.”  
  
Her mom’s sober crows-feet eyes looked up at her. She spoke dryly, “Learn anything?”  
  
Seiko made a non-committed gesture, “Maybe.” She frowned, “I think so.”  
  
Her mom just sighed and shook her head, “I saw you put your shoes away in the bread box when you got in. At 5 O’clock.”  
  
“5 O’clock,” Seiko repeated, “Thanks, I’ll go get them. Also,” she hesitated, deciding whether to go all in or not, “Also, I might call in sick Monday.”  
  
Her mom narrowed her eyes, “Oh?”  
  
Seiko just nodded and tried haltingly to explain, “I have something important to do. It might… need a lot of attention.”  
  
Her mom gave her a piercing looking, all folded brows and a discerning stare. She lifted her chin up, “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Seiko lifted her chin up, “Thanks mom. Thanks for everything.” She shuffled over to kiss her mom on the cheek, her mom blinked rapidly in reply.

“Oh my God,” she turned to her in horror, “How bad is it?”  
  
Seiko just gave a weak smile, “I need to go help a friend.” She waved, “I promise it’s important.”  
  
“Important enough to miss school?” Her mom kept frowning.

She gave her a thumbs up, “You betcha.”  
  
Her mom shook her head but waved her toward the door, “Don’t make it a habit.”

She shoved her shoes on, grabbed a bagged sandwich, and stuffed her fully charged cell phone into her inside pocket. She might need it. She turned as she reached the door, “I love you!”

Her mom just gaped, “Jesus, be careful.” Seiko’s mom said forcefully, but didn’t stop her as she raced out the door. The older woman tutted to herself, “Wild girl… Be home for dinner!”

Seiko streaked down the apartment steps and back into the light.

———-

Seiko once again made her way to the wedding-cake house on Townsend Street, paperless this time and taller than she had ever been. It was quiet, hushed with grey misty skies and yellow parched winter grass.

It hadn’t snowed in a few weeks and everything was frosted and bare across the naked trees and shuttered houses. It felt appropriate as Seiko made her way up the hill.

“Miss Lynne,” she practiced with herself, “I know you might not think it’s any of my business, but there’s something important I have to say,” she drew a deep breath, “I know you have your daughter’s best interests at heart, probably, maybe, but locking her away is absolutely the wrong thing! She’s a person, not a mint-condition action figure, last night was good for her!”

She mused over the words, rearranging them little by little, “She’s a young woman, not a fancy tea set to be put aside in a cupboard! Take it from me, I’m mostly-functioning, I mean I get decent grades. I mean, I’m allowed to roam around and my parents trust me to not mess up too bad. That’s good!”

She couldn’t quite make the right arguments, even to herself, but hadn’t she been trekking around neighborhoods on her bike since she before she could remember? Hadn’t she been fine? Wasn’t she evidence enough?  
  
Seiko couldn’t even imagine what Madame Lynne had to worry about in a rich neighborhood like hers anyway.

The house came up much faster than Seiko would have liked, all too familiar and yet alien at the same time. She stood on her tiptoes to peer through the fence and over the hedge, all the curtains were drawn on the house’s long Georgian windows. Seiko held her breath at the sight, pursing her lips together and inching her way toward the gate, there was no turning back now.

She touched the cold iron latch of the fairygate, resting her hands on it’s clasp and waiting for something. She closed her eyes and pushed it soundlessly open, it was time to go in. Seiko kept her back broom-straight and marched up the drive before she could talk herself out of it. She had been their paper girl, maybe that meant something.

She knocked on the door three times, jaw set and resolve hard as a cherry pit in her teeth.

“Okay, you see,” she muttered, practicing one last time, “It’s time to face the facts… This is no way to prepare your daughter for college!” Parents cared about that, they were really into colleges.

She knocked on the door again.

She counted to ten, no reply. Seiko started to huff, “Hello?” She called, “Not answering me is really unnecessary, I just want to talk!”  
  
Seiko was starting to find this childish, she screwed her face up and stomped on the hard porch. “Locking kids away isn’t good! And if you keep this up, well, I might just… call somebody. Somebody you won’t like!” She threatened, wondering if she’d actually need to prove Annalise was being mistreated to the cops.

She wondered how she might actually change things, how a conversation like ‘I think you should switch your entire parenting style’ went.

Seiko waited five more minutes with no reply.

She began to circle the house, tapping on the glass and trying to peer in, “Miss Lynne?” All the curtains were still drawn and the house was quiet as a graveyard angel, a sleeping beast to the world. “Annalise?”

Seiko circled the house again, coming back to the front door. She almost went cross-eyed staring at the big white doors, waiting for something. Seiko weighed her next move carefully, holding a single idea in place and poking at it.

There was no other choice.

“I’m coming in now.” She called out as loud as she dared, voice wobbling slightly, she turned the golden door handle and the back of her neck prickled. It wasn’t locked, the door swung open easily and revealed a dim empty house, faceless and unlit.

She gulped, this was the part in horror movies where the protagonist needed to run away, where you yelled at your TV ‘just don’t go on!’ The part where you wonder if they’re idiots or not.

Seiko took a step inside, shoulders hunched and eyes sweeping the gloomy foyer, it held a grand-staircase, blank white walls, and a short hall leading to a massive dining room. The stairs had thick pale carpet, grand wooden handrails, and a shadowed upper story. It all lacked many personal items, just a large plumy plant in the corner and coat rack off to the side.

The house smelled of dust and musky green things.

Seiko took a few more shaky footsteps inside, if the fence was the fairy gate this was surely the witch’s house.

“Anyone home?” She lifted her chin up, heart in her throat and eyes combing the emptiness, “Madame Lynne, I just have a few things to say.”

“How few?” She jerked around, someone was standing behind the door, “We prefer our deliveries outside paper girl.”  
  
Before Seiko could react, a clear crystal ball was raised in Madame Lynne’s outstretched hands, it caught the light for just a moment. A rainbow speckled across Seiko’s cheek as the ball was hoisted above her.

She didn’t even get a second to cry out, Madame Lynne brought the crystal ball down hard, pain bloomed at the top of Seiko’s head and shock sunk in like gushing ice water. She crumpled to her knees and her vision quickly spotted black.

She thought she heard a strangled cry from up above, but the world dimmed into a nothingness and was gone just as quickly.

——————–

There were voices, voices, piercing light, and an acute acrid taste in Seiko’s mouth. Seiko wanted to groan and roll away into some distant corner of sleep again.

“This is for your own good,” a voice snapped sharply.

“You don’t know what’s good for me!” a voice, Annalise, it must have been Annalise, hissed back, “This all for  _you._ ” There was a growl and a dark undercurrent to her words.

Seiko cracked her eyes open, she flinched, a pain was nestling deep in her forehead, a cruel pounding that thrashed around her frontal lobe, and this one wasn’t from a hangover. Dried blood ran down the left side of her face, making her skin stiff and eyelashes clump together when she blinked. Seiko squinted into the room around her.

It was bright, bright as flash bombs, pure white light shone from up above- a crystal chandelier hanging off a gilded silver fixture, casting diamond streaks of light and long shadows on the walls. The room itself looked like a grand bedroom, a dresser and vanity were pushed off to the side on a silvery grey carpet. Thick curtains covered the windows and the air was warm with blasting furnace heat, Seiko tensed, a large circle was drawn in the very center of the room. It looked rough, homemade, and wet, crude symbols were drawn along the edges and two blurry figures perched just outside the lines. The room smelled like unseen smoke and rotting things.

Seiko’s lips curled back, she tried to move her hands and found them tightly bound. She looked down, her wrists were tied crushingly to the arms of a high-backed chair. She had been captured.

“What the fuck?” She rocked back and forth in place, “WHAT THE FUCK.” Madame Lynne turned, she was wearing one of her dark shawls and a maroon head-covering. She looked over to Seiko like she was an unwanted chunk of mold on a piece of sweet bread.

“Who does this?” Seiko struggled against her restraints, “What the hell is this?”

“Seiko, stay calm, wait,” She looked up sharply, Annalise was sitting across from her, wearing a light blue nightdress and worry lines across every surface of her face. She was similarly tied up to a tall kitchen chair with sailor’s rope and immobilized. She was noticeably bedraggled, somehow paler and more worn, like a ghost of herself. There was something dented about her cheeks, shadowed and lifeless. Her were eyes dull and tired, a strip of tape or maybe plastic was stuck on her left cheek.

“Annalise!” She called out and tried to rock forward, she turned on Madame Lynne hotly, “Child services would definitely have your ass for this,” She narrowed her eyes, “What is it, some sort of occult thing?” She glanced at the circle, “Like, moms sacrificing their kids to satan kind of fucked-up?”  
  
She watched Annalise look bitterly over to her mom, gaze dark and unflinching. “She’s not my mom.”

“Of course I am,” Madame Lynne waved her hand dismissively, “What else would I be?” She snorted, then swiftly turned toward Seiko, stalking over to her in a sweeping shapeless dress and with outstretched clawed hands, “And you, the delivery girl,” she licked her lips, “What were you thinking? Smoke, really?  _Really?!_  Do you even know what you’ve done?” She stood back up, “Of course not, little fool.”  
  
Seiko rolled her eyes with a special type of gumption, “It was just weed, Jesus. It’s not going to kill her.”  
  
Madame Lynne lunged forward, one thin hand grabbing Seiko’s chin and jerking her head around to look her directly in the eye. “You don’t know anything.” She whispered acidicly, expression wide and empty, “You don’t what you’ve done.”  
  
Seiko sucked in a short breath, “I know you can’t treat her like this. I know this is probably pretty fucking illegal.”  
  
Madame Lynne’s lips twitched up, she released Seiko roughly and righted yourself. “You think the law means anything here?” A type of feral humor crossed her mismatched features, “Mortal enforcement wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Mortal…?” Seiko furrowed her brow, “Okay, I guess you’re definitely an alien or some sort of weird demon then. Good to know.”  
  
Madame Lynne turned to her slowly, “no, no,” she sang, “just a normal psychic woman,” she looked up at the ceiling, tone suddenly turning weary and sour. “It’s a story you’ve probably heard before.”  
  
“Oh trust me, I bet I haven’t.” Seiko tugged at her bonds, trying to loosen the grip just enough to slip her wrist out. “Try me.”

“Wait, wait, no,” Annalise shook her head vigorously, eyes wide, looking adrift and slightly sick to her stomach. “It’s not what you think… it’s not important.”  
  
Madame Lynne gave a cackling laugh, “Oh yes, you’ve heard it before. A woman who desperately wants a daughter, someone to hold and care for.” Her eyes looked misty and distant, lost somewhere. “And to care for her when she’s old and unwell.”

Seiko noticed Madame Lynne reaching into her pocket, absently retrieving something curved, pointed, and glittering from one of the deep folds. Seiko’s breath hitched, it looked like an item from an assassins medieval weapons set, a knife half the size of Seiko’s forearm balanced in the older woman’s hand.

Sweat gathered on the back of Seiko’s neck, she pulled on the ropes again.

“You wanted a daughter,” her eyes darted back to the knife in her hands, “So you had Annalise. Yeah, that’s how it works.”  
  
Madame Lynne shook her head with forlorn. “I couldn’t.” She sighed and rounded the witches circle in the bright room. “It was not in my fortunes.”  
  
Seiko frowned, tilting her head to the side. “So you adopted a daughter just to fuck with her later?”  
  
Annalise’s whole face collapsed, she twisted forward desperately, “Please… Seiko.” It sounded small, “I don’t want you to… I don’t…” She choked slightly, like a fish drowning on land.

Seiko shot her a concerned look and then turned back to the psychic. “You didn’t have to tie me to a chair for this speech.”  
  
Madame Lynne’s lips curled back, “I thought you should know what you’re going to part of.” She presented a cheerless smile. “I couldn’t have a daughter.” She continued, “So I made one.”  
  
“… Okay,” she looked back to Annalise who didn’t meet her eyes.

“I poured my love and my breath and my soul into paper and wax, pasting her together one layer at a time. A perfect beautiful daughter that I could hold and care for,” Madame Lynne sniffed, Seiko still wasn’t processing this. “The Old Ones saw me. They saw my heart’s desire, my greatest wish, all my work, and gave pity.” Madame Lynne looked up at the ceiling, a certain reverence there. “They brought my daughter to life for me.”  
  
Seiko eyes went wide, “What?” She squinted, “What?”  
  
Madame Lynne closed her eyes, “They breathed life into my beautiful paper doll.” She sighed, “and brought life to the lifeless.”  
  
Seiko sputtered, “Iike Pinocchio?”

Madame Lynne looked back to her, unsmiling. “No.”

Annalise gave a weak, sad hiccup of a laugh. “My nose doesn’t grow.”  
  
Madame Lynne tutted, “She could walk and talk, feel, learn, think, grow, live as a real girl.”  
  
Seiko’s heart started to beat faster, this was too strange. “Come on,” she relaxed into a tight smile, “Seriously? You want me to believe Annalise is some sort of… paper… person?” She moved her wrists back and forth, loosening them, “That’s crazy!”

Seiko should have come sooner to this nuthouse and done something.

“Crazy?” Madame Lynne barked a laugh, “Of course. Of course!” She turned around in a tight circle to face her daughter, “Crazy.”  
  
She reached for the tape on Annalise’s sunken cheek, “Crazy… Do you know what smoke does to paper?” She grabbed the strip. “To wax?”  
  
Seiko glared, “What the hell are you doing?”  
  
“Weakens it!” Madame Lynne yanked at the strip, a vicious tearing sound filled the room.

“No!” Seiko called out breathlessly as a chunk of Annalise’s skin was ripped away in one grisly tug. But no blood came out. No fluid, no muscle revealed or skin at all to behold.

Annalise cried out in pain, but underneath that layer of skin was just another layer: paper white, smooth, and blemishless.

Seiko gulped deeply, “You shouldn’t… do that.” She said weakly, her entire world turning upside down.

“A paper girl,” the psychic continued darkly, “can’t go out in the sun without her wax melting, can’t go into the rain without sagging, can’t touch the snow without disintegrating. Can’t eat, can’t drink,” She snarled, “I have done nothing but keep my daughter safe!”

The blood drained from Seiko’s face, she glanced between Annalise and her mom, trying to parse through this. She focused on the other girl, “Annalise…?” It was soft, a question, probing at her gently.

Annalise looked miserably down at her knees and a few long seconds passed, “I’m not her thing.” She whispered quietly, “I have my own thoughts, wants, my own life.” She jerked her head up, “I’m not her thing!”

Seiko’s mouth fell open. “No… you’re not?” She was still trying to wrap her mind around being able to make a person out of paper and wax.  
  
Madame Lynne waved at Annalise dismissively, “We’ve been over this. I needed to keep you safe,” She exhaled, “but this one.” She turned on Seiko with her nasty gleaming knife, “this one is going to change everything for us.”  
  
Seiko leaned back in her chair, “Maybe… plastic wrap?” She offered with a feeble smile, “We could laminate her.”  
  
“Haha,” the woman’s voice echoed, “You always were a funny one.” She leered, “Maybe Annalise will inherit that when you give your life for hers.”

“No?” Seiko squeaked shrilly.

“I was against such things before, but well, you broke in.” She laughed, “Who can a blame a homeowner for defending herself?”  
  
Seiko jerked her head back and forth, looking between the two women, “Annalise?” She asked in a shrill voice, sweat beading down her temples, “Haha, jokes up, nice one guys. I’ve learned my lesson, no more coming in uninvited.”  
  
Madame Lynne bent her head down, “Bone and blood.” She started to chant, “Bone and blood, bone and blood, take this flesh and take this soul, take from the corporeal make to the core, b-”  
  
“You can’t do this!” Seiko shrieked, the knife was coming carefully toward her unmarked forearm, ready to sink it’s teeth in. “You can’t make her a real girl through me!”

Madame Lynne wasn’t listening.

“No,” a thunk came from across the room, the chair across from Seiko careening over in one loud crash. Seiko and Madame Lynne snapped to attention. “You can’t.”

Annalise had ripped one hand free of the ropes, wrenching her skin to ribbons and using what was left to untie the other. She rolled out of her chair, raising to her feet with a trail of uncoiled paper hanging loosely from her left forearm.

Madame Lynne straightened up with a forced smile, “What are you doing, darling?”  
  
Annalise lifted her chin high in the air, “What I should have done a long time ago.” She went sprinting across the room, spitting and tearing like a feral cat on the attack. “Put. That. Down!”

They crashed into each other. Mother and daughter, wrestling for a silver glittering knife.

Seiko wiggled against her own harsh ropes, ugly red abscesses forming along her forearm as she struggled, she managed to loosen one of her hands enough to yank her palm out. “Ah!” A burn scorched across her skin, she gritted her teeth and tugged through the pain.

Meanwhile, Annalise grappled with her mother, clawing at her face with her battered hand and a fiery hissing force, a battle cry spilling out of her from years of bottled grief.

“I’m not yours!” She roared over and over, “You can’t have me!”

Seiko ripped at her shackles, freeing one hand and fumbling with the other tight knot with shaking fingers and breathless movements. She unbound her wrist in one swift tug and bolted to her feet instinctually, ignoring the throbbing in her arms and head.

“Annalise!” She called, voice rasping and heart pounding as if it might collapse in her chest like a straw birds nest in a hurricane. She reached out, “I’m free, we’re free, Annalise!”

Annalise glanced up from where she wrestled her mom. She looked down again, gave a final roar and tore the knife out of her mom’s hand. She took the weapon in hand, lifted it high, and threw it viciously across the room. It lodged into the wood of the house with a twang and Annalise leapt to her feet.

“I’m so sorry,” she wailed and reached for Seiko, jumping up as Madame Lynne dove for the knife again.

Seiko grabbed Annalise’s good hand. “Don’t even worry.” She tried to smile, “I’ve had weirder nightmares than this.”

Annalise cringed, “It’s not over yet.”

They throw themselves at the door and toward escape. Seiko twisted the lock open and they shoot out into the dark hall with furious feet and numb legs. Annalise led them through the house, turning down a hallway and toward the quiet grand staircase. “Down, down, down.”  
  
Annalise yanked them down the stairs at a breakneck pace, running as a wordless howl chased their progress toward the blurry grey outside.

Seiko overtook her as they reached the front door, “We’re going to get you out of here.” She promised, “You’re going to be out of this house for good.”  
  
“Seiko,” Annalise squeezed Seiko’s hand painfully as Seiko tore the door open, spilling in weak wintery light. “Seiko, what she said was… true.” Annalise relented disjointedly, looking down at her feet. “I’m not… like you.”

“I don’t care,” Seiko said fiercely, “You can be a girl made of snow or cat litter or whatever the hell, but I know you’re a person! And you don’t have to stay here,” She stepped closer to her, eyes softening, “Not if you don’t want to.”  
  
Annalise looked between Seiko, the blurry outside, and then back up to her wailing mother upstairs. She set her jaw, voice thick with brimming emotion, “I don’t want to stay here.”  
  
Seiko pulled them out the door, out into the bleak day and the smooth path out, out, out. They made their way down the driveway.

“But,” Annalise followed limply behind, mind obviously whirling as they ran. “Where will I live?” She asked the open air suddenly, “Where will I go?”  
  
“Move now,” Seiko yanked open the fairy gate, “Think later.”  
  
They only had a moment to hold their breath on the precipice of the yard before a banging came from behind them. Madame Lynne burst out the front door and flung herself onto the porch rail, hair falling down in black waves and eyes bulging. “If you leave you can’t come back!” She spat, “You’re nothing but paper, I won’t have you after this.”

Annalise hovered at the edge of the property, eyes unmoving and clouded. She drew a deep breath, “I’d rather be nothing than be your ornament!” She shouted firmly, squeezed Seiko’s hand and then pulled them both through the gate. Then they were running again, panting, howling, skipping down the sidewalk toward the highway and out of Greenbriar. Out, out, out.

Madame Lynne didn’t follow.

“Wow! That was amazing, awesome, fantastic Annalise,” Seiko cheered as they danced into the middle of the empty road, hot with adrenaline and a vicious type of joy. “You did it.”  
  
Annalise looked up, smiling wearily, “It’s over.” She sighed, “it’s over.”

Seiko vibrated, “You can live in my room, I’ll roll a mat out. My mom won’t be happy, but I’m sure once I explain it to her she’ll have to. And we can sleep over and I’ll make pancakes in the morning.”  
  
Annalise was slowing down, dark eyes looking up the sky. “Seiko,” she said slowly, evenly. “This is everything I ever wanted.”  
  
Seiko glanced back at her and laughed, “Don’t say that yet, you haven’t even had the

pancakes.” Her thoughts were already going over logistics, Annalise had missed  _a lot_  of school and a lot of socializing. It would have to be a process.

But that could be handled, it could all be handled.

And then a fat wet snowdrop fell. Wet and soggy and spiked with ice, just like the downpour all those years ago with two young girls and a missing earring. The rain fell.

“No,” Seiko looked up, the world slowing into a single tiny moment. “No.”  
  
She turned, Annalise’s cheek had smeared into a wet slushy white paste, flesh sinking in like a deflating party balloon. Seiko’s eyes went wide with horror.

“Hurry,” she pushed on Annalise, “Let’s get you to a shelter. I have some… paper mache at the house, I can fix that.”  
  
Annalise just shook her head and stayed in place, more heavy droplet’s hit her forehead and shoulders, tearing at her gently.

“Go.” Her voice was wispy, watery with unshed tears, “There’s no place for me out there, I have no money, no family, no home… Go Seiko, live your life, live, you deserve it.” She stood in place, “just… remember me.”  
  
Seiko staggered backward, grabbing at Annalise. “You deserve a fucking life too,” tears stung at her eyes, she pushed on Annalise to move, to walk, but the other girl didn’t budge. Seiko gnashed her teeth, “We didn’t… we didn’t get you of there just to end here. You deserve it so much, look at me,” she sobbed, “Look at me, I’m not letting you just stand here.”  
  
Her breaths came out in distressed tiny bursts. Annalise wrapped her arms around Seiko’s neck, “that night,” Annalise’s whole face was sagging down, weighed down by pelts of snow. “It was the best moment of my entire life. Everything, it was worth every second.”  
  
“Goddammit!” Seiko planted her feet, bent down and thrust her arms underneath Annalise’s knees and armpits, hoisting her up in the air bridal style. “Stop it. It’s not going to end like this!”

Annalise took a shaky breath, “you’re going to have such a beautiful life, I can see it.”  
  
“Shut up!” Seiko ran, barely feeling her legs as she carried the light girl over to the nearest shelter. They take refuge under a large bus stop overhang. “You’re the one that’s beautiful, your life will be too.”  
  
“Look at me.” Annalise breathed, Seiko kept her gaze on the flurry of white sky above, biting her lip in two as she did. “Please.” Annalise begged, “I promise… it’ll be okay.”

Seiko forced herself to look down. Annalise was melting, skin peeling away from her face and tissues sinking inward like holes in quicksand, leaving nothing behind. “Kiss me.”  
  
Seiko’s choked on the air, tears spilling out across her cheeks in thick sheets, running freely down her face. “N-no.” She shook her head vigorously. “You’re not a thing, you’re a person, a person, you hear me? You have your whole life to figure stuff out. A whole life… to kiss.”  
  
Annalise licked her lips, leaving no moisture behind, she was folding inward, becoming even lighter in Seiko’s arms. Coming apart.

Annalise wiped gently at Seiko’s streaming tears, “I can’t come with you.” She whispered, “I knew that, I always knew it.” She took a labored breath. “This was always going to happen. But at least… it’s a good happening.”

“Fuck, no,” Seiko begged, “it’s not good, it’s awful. This can’t… I can’t…”  
  
Annalise gave a weak smile, “Go. See the world, fall in love, make something, be anything, you were always made for life Seiko.”  
  
Seiko shook her head vigorously, “You can’t,” she was hyperventilating, “You can’t talk like that.”  
  
Annalise closed her eyes, “I can’t stay.”  
  
“No!” She wailed, “You can’t. I- I love you.”

Annalise just nodded, “Oh Seiko, I won’t be the last one to love you,” she stroked her cheek, “there’s so much for you.”

And then she was kissing her. Wet and crumpling and filled with a vigorous force she couldn’t explain. Annalise’s hands ran through Seiko’s damp hair and they kiss with the anguish of bursting stars and holes boring into the ozone. It’s harsh and gentle as a settling frost and whisper on the wind.

They kiss and kiss, tears spilling from her eyes and a hard begging in every crevice of her:  _no, no, no._  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

She kissed until nothing but cold air touched her lips. Seiko opened her eyes, she was holding a limp nightdress and wet paper folding into a pile of unrecognizable mush, disintegrating at every angle. A collapsed paper doll.  
  
“No!” She shrieked, tearing at her vocal cords in a shattering sob, “Annalise, Annalise,” she pulled the wet paper to her chest and rocked it back and forth. “Say something, goddammit, Annalise! Annalise, I love you.”  
  
The wet paper didn’t respond, just folded silently into the soggy ground and disappeared with nothing but Seiko and the snow as witnesses.  
  
Seiko cried until there was nothing left to cry.

—————–

Seiko quit the soccer team. Liza said she understood, Seiko told her that maybe their friendship could use a small break. She told June she was making her own film, they could watch it together sometime.

She told her mom she loved her, she told her father he was doing a good job, and whispered to her little sister she was going to make a better path forward, for the both of them.

She told them that she liked girls, that she liked movies, and that she liked not working and going out sometimes. They took her out for a long drive and Seiko drove the hole way back herself.

Seiko put her pen to paper that night:  _Dear Annalise,_

 _I won’t forget you._  Her hands shook like dried autumn leaves,  _I’m 16 now, maybe I wasn’t before. I wish you were here. I’m going to the movies with a girl, I’m going to start reading that book about trees you liked._

_I’m going to go live my life, whatever you meant by that, and I’m going to make something beautiful. For us._

_Love, always,_

_Seiko._


End file.
